


Natural Selection : Act I

by Laily



Series: Natural Selection [3]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore - Freeform, Angst, Appendicitis, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Cuddling & Snuggling, Day At The Beach, Developing Relationship, Fluff, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Humor, Hurt Loki (Marvel), Hurt Stephen Strange, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Intersex Loki (Marvel), Jotunn Loki (Marvel), M/M, Protective Loki (Marvel), Protective Stephen Strange, Romance, Sick Loki (Marvel), Sick Stephen Strange, Slow Burn, Strangefrost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2020-10-15 00:17:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 27,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20609750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laily/pseuds/Laily
Summary: It began with a fall. Thus, it must end with a fall.





	1. It's Not Weird/Dominoes

  1. It’s not weird. Not weird at all.

Stephen likes watching Loki sleep.

No, scratch that.

He loves watching Loki sleep.

Strangely, Stephen feels he has learnt more about Loki when he’s sleeping than when he’s awake. Some may call it cheating. He calls it diagnostic intelligence.

Imagine the Winchester House is a house layered by windows instead of secret doors and secret rooms and stairs that go nowhere.

It is only when Loki’s asleep that the windows are open, offering Stephen an unobstructed view of what’s inside. And every night it’s something different.

Loki is an enigma. Any sane person would find him too complicated, too complex. Too much.

Not Stephen. How else does one explain his vocation of choice? He prides himself to be the expert on the workings and the mechanics of the most important organ in the human body, the brain. How can he not like unraveling the mystery that is Loki?

One thing is for sure, he will never get bored of this relationship. Driven eventually insane, yes, probably, but never bored.

Stephen reaches out to touch Loki’s arm. Even the feel of his skin is electric.

Is this love?

It took Stephen a full three months to convince Loki that it is safe to fall asleep around him. The Sanctum is a sentient being and seeing it in the light of day is nothing like seeing it in the deep shadows of the night and would Loki like to see? Stephen always asks.

And the answer was always ‘Thank you ever so kindly, but perhaps another time‘.

Stephen has a suspicion Loki knows more than he’s letting on. The Sanctum welcomed him more openly than it has ever welcomed anyone Stephen ever bothered to bring ‘home.’

And suddenly late one evening after a light dinner of medallion steaks and fine wine, the answer turned ‘Yes.’ And it has been ‘Yes’ ever since.

It has been a month now since Stephen picked up his latest hobby of waking up in the middle of the night just to listen to Loki breathe and watch the steady rise and fall of Loki’s pale chest.

Tonight the scar looks prominent, much more prominent than the nights before. It scared the shit out of Stephen one night when he saw it, all red and angry like someone had just run a burning sword through Loki’s sternum.

Loki assuaged his near-panic by assuring him that it happened a long time ago; he was only showing it to Stephen now.

It makes Stephen wonder just how many scars Loki has hidden under the camouflage of his glamor.

No matter. Stephen is a meticulous, patient and a very exacting man.

Be it months, years, it doesn’t matter. Stephen will open the windows one by one.

  1. Dominoes

Loki knows the effects he has on people.

He makes them uncomfortable.

Discomfort comes in many shapes and form.

His parents used to walk on eggshells around him. He never knew why. Until his arm turned blue at the touch of a Frost Giant.

Thor loves him. He knows that now. He doubted it before. But doubt works in mysterious ways, one day it’s there, one day it isn’t anymore.

If there comes a day this finite world should meet its end just like all the other worlds before it, Loki can say for certain Thor would stand between him and the abyss or the inferno or whatever form the world’s end decides to take on in its final moments.

Midgardians are a funny lot. Many worship him, some even love him. The rest hate him.

And suddenly there was Stephen.

In all the centuries Loki has lived, he has never met one quite like Stephen Strange.

It has never occurred to Loki that he would ever fall this hard for anyone, let alone a human.

But this Stephen Strange? Is no ordinary human.

Sure, it took Loki a while to get over the whole kidnapping and trapping him in a free-falling portal thing but just like doubts, grudges work in mysterious ways too. They thaw. Eventually.

In their case, it thawed the day Tony Stark arrived in New Asgard with the Sorcerer Supreme in tow. Loki was in the greenhouse overseeing the final stages of altering the composition of the soil to suit whatever crop their farmers wish to grow.

So one can say they bonded over farming. Not the most romantic story one can tell one’s children.

Oh _Norns_. Why is Loki thinking about children?

So Loki does what Loki wants and what Loki does best.

Loki runs.

He certainly doesn’t expect Stephen Strange to run after him.

He fell for Stephen Strange once. He finds himself falling again but this time it isn’t the hard floor of the atrium he finds kissing his face. Instead it is the softest pair of lips he has ever felt. Is it magic or are human lips all this soft?

Loki decides he doesn’t care. The dominoes are falling, and all he can see is the one waiting for him at the end of it all is none other than this strange human sorcerer with the smartest mouth but the kindest eyes and the softest lips and hands and heart and Loki is starting to believe that he is worthy…

Worthy of love. And love is sweet.

He knows Stephen is watching.

He reaches out a hand and pulls his human (Lover? Boyfriend?) close for a kiss.

Yep. Love is sweet alright.


	2. Keep Calm & Keep Clean/Permission to Enter, Sir?

  1. Keep Calm and Keep Clean

It is no secret that Loki loves long baths. It was one of the first few things brought to Stephen’s attention, courtesy of one very observant but annoyingly inquisitive fellow Guardian by the name of Master Wong.

Wong has never batted an eye whenever Stephen brings anyone home. Probably because the only people he has ever brought home are people who happen to be in need of actual help, of the metaphysical kind.

Come to think of it, Wong was the epitome of cool the first time Loki voluntarily set foot in The Sanctum, (figuratively speaking of course, for Loki did not so much as walk into the Sanctum, with not so much voluntariness as unconsciousness);

Who knew Thor could juggle his cumbersome hammer and his equally-cumbersome brother both without dropping either in his near-berserk state of panic as he thundered through the front door of The Sanctum, bellowing at the top of his godly lungs for help.

A battle in the heart of New York City and of course, the ever-unlucky God of Mischief who was only in town as part of Thor’s royal entourage to a security council special meeting at the UN had to go and get himself caught in the crossfire.

Why Loki did not use magic to shield himself or teleport before HYDRA’s Tesseract-powered assault rifle emptied its magazine into his chest was anyone’s guess…but Stephen’s.

After all, he was the one who drafted the magical contract that stipulated that should Loki find himself in the city he had once attempted to conquer, the once-most powerful sorcerer in Asgard would be rendered as magic as a soggy crouton.

That contract has since been slashed and burned beyond all recognition not even the Eye of Agamotto could restore it; (a figure of speech, for of course it can) but it took Stephen a full two days before he could look Thor in the eye, and another five days before he could Loki (for it did take Loki quite a bit longer to return from the brink of death this time).

So yes, going back to the bath story.

Thor refused to take Loki back to New Asgard until he was convinced Loki was truly healed.

Stephen could not very well argue when the God of Thunder himself demanded him ‘fix’ his precious little brother (not that Stephen did not deserve the task imposed upon him, since it was technically Stephen’s fault that Loki got hurt in the first place).

So Stephen did what Stephen Strange used to do best and what he can now do even better; he got all of Loki’s pieces back in one piece again.

And the first thing the God of Mischief said the moment he opened eyes no longer glassy with the pull of death was, ‘I wish to be clean.’

No surprises there, for Loki did smell. The stench of blood reeked all the same to aliens, Stephen supposed.

“I will help you to the shower,” Stephen offered.

Loki declined. “A bath.”

That was when Wong’s cool façade slipped a little.

Perhaps he was beginning to rethink the merits of hogging the nicest bedroom in the Sanctum with its fancy walls and fancy Great Gatsby bathroom, and Stephen the demerits of letting Wong have it.

“Master Wong, if you could please help our guest to the bath?”

After an hour of listening to the sounds of rushing water and _furious_ scrubbing,

“He’s been in there for over an hour, Strange.”

“It’s your bathroom, Wong.”

The scrubbing sounds escalated in intensity.

_what is this guy, an alligator?_

“I hate you.”

"Love you too, Wong."

Not long after, Stephen had a bathtub installed in his bathroom, a clawfoot one, in gold no less.

A peace offering, he kept telling himself.

The gold was just for aesthetics.

The look of pure delight in Loki’s green, green eyes the next time he visited, and every time he visits thereafter, is worth the sudden sky-rocketing of their water and heating bills, Stephen decides.

  1. Permission to enter, Sir?

It was a battle long and bloody.

Stephen emerges from the portal and ignores the trail of blood he is leaving behind. No worries, Wong will take care of it soon enough. One would probably never guess, but his fellow Guardian is much more of a stickler for infection control.

Good thing too, because Stephen has bigger things on his mind. He isn’t even a surgeon anymore.

And the blood probably isn’t his; it looks too purple, and he sure isn’t the best person to ask about what type of magic detergent gets rid of dragon blood.

It still stinks up the Sanctum though. And judging from the way his tunic is sticking to his stinging back and chest, he’s got a couple of wounds that need toileting and probably suturing.

Shower, he thinks. A nice, hot, soapy shower.

Stephen turns the water as high up and as hot as it would go.

It burns the claw wounds on his back. It scalds his skin. But never has pain felt so good.

Stephen takes it all back not a moment too soon. The burning is showing no sign of letting up, and it really is beginning to hurt. A whole damn lot.

He moans. Loudly too. He is alone after all.

Even if he sheds a tear or two from the pain, or the grief from having lost a few good men in the battle, no one will know.

Feathery fingers trace a watery path down the back of his neck.

Stephen’s heart leaps to his throat – _Who?_

He turns around; no one is there.

A minute passes as he studies the steam-condensed air.

Stephen turns to the wall again and lifts his face heavenward, letting the hot water caress the tight muscles of his head and neck.

The hands now grasp his shoulders.

Stephen stills.

Invisible thumbs drill into his shoulder blades, and begin to knead along the hollow groove beneath them.

Despite the rude intrusion, Stephen does not turn around this time.

The concept of violating another person’s privacy is an alien one (no pun intended) to the intruder, it seems. It delights Stephen to find that the decision to allow or reject it no longer stumps him as it once did.

The healing magic waits to be let in.

Stephen lifts the internal barriers easily enough, as easily as leaning back into Loki’s awaiting arms and chest.

He sighs as Loki’s magic mixes with the heat of the water and seeps into the broken skin of his back.

“This will leave a scar or two, Sorcerer Supreme,” Loki whispers in his ear. “Your back is a mess.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Stephen murmurs.

“My word and what else?”

Stephen smiles. The pain is gone. The wounds are healed.

He turns his head.

No longer invisible, Loki’s bright eyes pierced through the balmy shadows of the vapor-filled air.

Stephen catches his lips. “Everything else of you.”


	3. Curiouser & Curiouser/A Heart for a Bruise

  1. Curiouser and curiouser

A politer word for strange is peculiar.

Technically it is hardly an insult for him; people do call him strange all the time, what with it being his actual name and everything. Haha.

It has been quite some time since he laughed at his own jokes.

But Loki is strange in a way that makes you want to laugh at first, until you realise that it isn’t actually funny.

When Stephen and Loki finally went ‘Oh what the hell’ and threw themselves at each other (and in essence, a proverbial ‘Take that, suckers!’ in the faces of everyone who thought their relationship doomed from the start) and proved the doubters (Asgardian and Midgardian alike) wrong, Stephen never thought his choice of bedding essentials would be the first he would have to rethink to accommodate his lover’s…intriguing sleeping habits.

For one thing, Loki doesn’t sleep on pillows.

Well. At least not on Stephen’s pillows. Or any other conventional human pillows.

I mean, did you know, the memory foam pillow industry alone is worth nearly three hundred million dollars a year?

Stephen didn’t. He does now.

And Loki goes ‘meh’ at every pillow Stephen buys for him, from the best, ergonomic-contour ones in the market to the fluffiest, most luxurious, down ones. Goose? Duck? He has got them all.

So what does the Prince of Asgard sleep on when he comes over?

Hard, ancient scrolls. Better still if they’re made out of papyrus. 

“That doesn’t look comfortable at all,” Stephen says as Loki lays his head on a parchment scroll from the Byzantine empire he has just finished helping Stephen translate.

“And you call _me_ a creature of comfort,” Loki sneers. “Coming from a species that puts pillows in coffins for their corpses to rot on.”

The back curvature of his neck follows the arc of the scroll perfectly and Loki sighs in comfort that sounds too much like relief to Stephen’s physician ears.

He wonders if Loki is hurting. He probably is, judging by how irritable he has been the whole day. From what, Stephen does not know and does not ask. Loki does not answer questions readily.

_‘Do Asgardians not sleep on pillows?’_

_‘Of course we do,’ Thor says. He eyes the human sorcerer suspiciously. It is not the first time Stephen has asked him strange questions after all. They get stranger and stranger every day. ‘Why?’_

_‘No reason,’ Stephen says vaguely. _

Still Stephen perseveres.

Loki chucks the lavender aromatherapy pillow out the window. He knows there is a homeless person who loiters outside The Sanctum sometimes.

“Really, Loki?” Stephen holds his hands to his waist, exasperated.

“Really, Strange?” Loki mimics.

“I just want you to be comfortable,” Stephen mutters. He sits on the edge of the bed.

“The only way this is going to work is if you go back in time and get me a _takamakura_. The hardest one you can find, if you please.”

“What the hell is that?”

“A traditional head rest samurais and geishas used to sleep on back in Ancient Japan, made out of wood.”

Stephen blinks. “You’re kidding.”

Loki shrugs. “Historically, it was to protect the samurai’s topknot and the geisha’s elaborate coiffure.”

Stephen gives him a look of disbelief. “You refuse to sleep on pillows because you’re afraid they would mess up your _hair?_”

For some reason Loki’s hand reaches up and ghosts over his throat.

“Yes.” His smile looks false. “Yes, that’s exactly the reason.”

Stephen stares. “You’re very peculiar,” he finally says.

Loki’s smile turns beguiling. He walks his hands and knees over. “That’s just another word for strange, isn’t it.”

Stephen closes his eyes as he opens his mouth, parting his lips to give in to the kiss –

“Careful, Doctor Strange,” Loki breathes in the split-second the soft kisses break to make way for harder, deeper ones. “One might mistake that for a proposal.”

Stephen mumbles, “Mistake away.”

Loki tastes so _good_, too good for this to just be a

_mistake_

So he says it again. “Mistake away.”

  1. A Heart for a Bruise

As a child, Stephen had an irrational fear of double beds. And queen beds. King ones too, for that matter.

Basically, put him in anything bigger than a single, and the jitters would keep him awake till the light of day.

What’s the extra space for? There’s only one of him.

Anything or anyone can fill in such a dead space. Boogeymen, wild animals, home invaders. And after his sister’s death, he added ‘spirits’ to the list.

He has since outgrown the fear, of course, having soon learnt what the other side of the bed is for.

After Christine, it remained empty for many years.

At the Sanctum, he sleeps on a king bed, and always with his back to the wall, facing the door – a defensive position, learned over generations, ingrained in the human DNA over centuries.

He finds it the most comfortable position anyway. His right ear is the more sensitive after all; sleeping sideways on his right drowns out the noise of New York City considerably.

Loki does not seem the kind to take kindly to anyone mollycoddling him so Stephen does not offer to sleep next to the door. He assumes whatever dares to come attacking while they’re asleep will soon wish they hadn’t been so daring.

A fifteen-hundred-year-old creature of legend sharing his bed? Talk about the psychological effects of exclusivity and scarcity, keeping Stephen more awake than asleep on most nights.

What new thing is he to discover about Loki this night then?

More importantly, where is he going to find this taika-mackerel thing anyway?

Loki mumbles in his sleep and suddenly the faceful of black hair Stephen has been nosing for a good half-hour turns into an actual face as Loki turns over from lying on his stomach to lying on his back – and in doing so, sends an arm and a leg dangling down the side of the bed. 

Stephen waits for Loki to wake and hopes he doesn’t.

Loki remains still. Sex always renders him insensate in every sense of the word, at least until an ambulance or a police car shoots down the street and sirens him awake. That, or Stephen himself.

But not tonight. Loki looks tired.

Stephen climbs over the tangle of long, white limbs carefully and tries not to think about how inviting they look, as inviting as Loki’s slightly ajar lips.

He lifts Loki’s arm and tucks it back at Loki’s side.

He does the same to Loki’s long leg. For something that goes on forever, it is certainly as heavy as it looks. When Loki’s ankle slips down again, Stephen decides Loki is too close the edge and that he should push his sleeping lover inward, more toward the centre of the bed.

Stephen succeeds, but as one _can_ be too successful sometimes, he is not surprised to find that Loki is now sleeping on _his_ side of the bed and Loki, somewhere between deep sleep and semi-awake, unconsciously scoots himself downward to get Stephen’s pillow out of the way.

Loki’s long hair catches between his ear and the pillow as he slides his head down.

Stephen’s heart skips a beat.

A sliver of moonlight peeks through the transom window. It illuminates the exposed back of Loki’s neck. Now that his hair is out of the way, it should be pale, as pale as the rest of him…but it isn’t.

It takes Stephen a few long seconds to realise what it is he is actually seeing.

Bruises, multiple bruises, livid and violaceous, encircle Loki’s neck.

Stephen reaches out to touch, but stops short. He stares at his fingers as they hover in mid-air.

Fingers. The bruises are imprints of somebody’s fingers.

_Shit, Loki._

His vision blurs.

_Who did this to you?_

‘Come now, Doctor,’ Loki’s voice rings in his head, chiding yet gentle.

_Surely you know._

His fingers flop limply onto the covers.

No. Stephen is not going to hurt Loki the way the bastard did.

Stephen props his elbows on the bed and leans forward. He touches his lips to the darkest of the bruises.

Loki stirs.

He turns his head, and stares in wonder.

“Strange?” he murmurs.

Stephen ignores him. He plants another soft kiss, this time on Loki’s lips.

“I’m sorry, Loki.”

Loki frowns. Then he remembers the kiss, feather-light against the sensitive skin of his neck.

He searches his lover’s face. Sees the tears in the blue-grey eyes.

“Don’t be, Stephen.” Loki’s tone is light but the fingers touching Stephen’s cheek are tremulous. “He killed you too.”

Stephen shakes his head. “I don’t feel it anymore.” _But you do_, he adds silently.

He climbs onto the bed.

“I’m sorry.”

"So you’ve said, Doctor.”

“No, not about – ” _Thanos_, Stephen catches himself before he can say the name. “About the whole pillow thing.”

A glazed look falls over Loki’s eyes –

“I’m so stupid.”

– and they soften. The glazed look leaves. “You didn’t know.”

Stephen hesitantly reaches out a hand.

Loki looks at it for a fraction of a second before he finally takes it.

“I want you to know – ” A calloused thumb caresses Loki’s ivory knuckles, “That you can tell me anything.”

Stephen takes away his thumb and replaces it with his lips. “I _want_ you to tell me anything.”

_Everything_.

Loki pulls on his hand. Stephen lays himself down on the bed.

He stays warily still as Loki rearranges himself. Soon Stephen finds himself lying flat on his back, his left arm suddenly heavy with the weight of Loki’s head, tucked neatly in the crook of his elbow.

“Is this okay?” Loki asks softly.

Stephen’s forehead creases. “Are _you_ okay?”

Loki presses in closer, until the entire half of his face thrums with the lulling, strong beating of Stephen’s heart and magic. “Hmm.”

Loki smiles a secret smile. To think of all the trouble Stephen’s gone to, just to find him a silly pillow, when the perfect one has been here all along.

“This is my side of the bed from now on, Strange.”

“I can live with that, Odinson." Stephen pulls him in closer, sighs in relief, and love’s embrace. "I can definitely live with that."


	4. A Choice We Never Had/Silence in the Library

  1. A Choice We Never Had

Movie nights are tricky. They shouldn't be, usually, but with Loki, they either make or break the rest of the night. Stephen remembers the one time they watched the Hunger Games and the peculiar comments Loki made about how Panem reminded him of a little place called

“Sakaar. Only much bleaker and greyer.”

When the President of Panem made his first appearance, Loki only snorted. “Hysterical as it was, at least the Grandmaster had his own inimitable sense of fashion. This guy’s boring, boring, _boring_. Even his hair's boring.”

Nor could Stephen make himself forget the time they had to miss the Lord of the Rings Marathon at the cinemas because of the very inconvenient timing of one Doctor Victor von Doom, whose magical army had stormed The Sanctum without warning in search of a relic.

They were looking for Wong’s Wand of Watoomb to be exact, but of course, they were no match against Stephen and an understandably enraged Loki –

“You sure this is a good idea?” Wong had asked the day after, as he handed the DVDs over to Stephen.

Stephen took a deep breath. “How bad can it be?” 

“Eleven-and-a-half hours bad.”

“Eleven and a –” Stephen’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets but he kept them in place with a longer, deeper breath. “Sure. I can do that.”

He countered Wong’s sceptical look with a low growl. “I’ve stood for longer taking out a tumour from someone’s frontal lobe, Wong.”

“Did the patient survive?”

“Of course,” he answered, feeling slightly insulted.

“Well I hope I can say the same for you,” Wong said in sympathy.

Wong had been right to worry. Loki’s non-stop commentaries made Stephen itch to reach for the controls and turn the TV off innumerable times and they had barely finished the first movie.

“Gandalf’s staff. Looks a lot like Gungnir.” Loki cheers. "Packs a punch like it too."

“Galadriel looks suspiciously like my dead sister.” He wrinkles his nose. "Hair is still horrible, though."

“Some Vanir warriors do look strangely effeminate, especially the ones hailing from the northern territories. They have pointed ears too. And they’re particularly deadly with bows and arrows.” A confused frown. “Are you sure a Midgardian made this film, Stephen?”

“For God’s sake, Loki, just watch the movie, will you?” Stephen finally snapped.

“Surtur.”

“What?”

“Balrog. The demon of Fire.” Loki’s eyes had glazed over. “Bears a great resemblance.”

“To whom?”

“Surtur,” Loki repeated faintly. The light from the screen played across his dilated pupils. “I burned his skull with The Eternal Flame and revived him. I watched him destroy Asgard and turn it into dust.”

Loki looked down at his hands, staring at the blood he could not see but knew was there; they were the hands that brought about Ragnarok after all.

Stephen quickly grabbed the one closest to him and hid it, burrowing their clasped hands under the woollen throw in his lap. “Let’s watch something else.”

Thankfully, Loki agreed and by random selection, they ended up watching Footloose on Netflix and enjoyed it, much to their collective surprise.

Loki was even smiling toward the end and the night ended on a very happy, active note.

So this week, as always, Stephen is very careful when it comes to selecting just the right movie to watch; it has to be something that will not trigger his over-sensitive, centuries-old boyfriend, and because Loki seems to enjoy classic movies more than modern ones…

“The Interview with the Vampire?” Loki reads the title tease. “Really, Strange?”

“Why not? It’s sexy, romantic, visually pretty…everyone wears frock coats and ruffles. You love that sort of thing, don't you?” Stephen presses the play button on the control. “It’s pure, mindless cinematic experience at its bloodiest.”

Stephen leans back against the couch and beckons; with a reluctant sigh, Loki inches in closer.

“Vampires and zombies.” Loki makes a face. “I can never see the appeal with them. Do you know how difficult it is to kill a draugr?”

Stephen assumes that’s a monster of some sort from Loki’s homeland, and since Asgard does not exist anymore, the draugrs are probably a thing of the past and nothing to be worried about.

“It’s one of Christine’s favourite movies. She always tried to make me watch it but never once succeeded.”

“Hardly surprising, is it. Half of Midgard’s women used to be in love with Brad Pitt, the other half with Tom Cruise.”

Stephen chuckles. “Antonio Banderas is more to her taste, I think.”

“He’s in this, too?” Loki cheers up.

Long ago, Loki had read a novel. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love it was called, by an Oscar Hijuelos, randomly picked from a deserted library in a deserted town in the Mojave Desert.

He finished it in less than half an hour. Upon learning there was a movie based on the novel, Stephen tracked it down for him and The Mambo Kings made history as the first ever movie they had watched together, and Loki loved it. The company helped, of course. As did Antonio Banderas’ portrayal of the lovesick, ill-fated Nestor, and his loving, older brother Cesar, whose love for his brother lived on even after Nestor’s untimely, tragic death.

For all of Stephen's efforts however, tonight might just turn out to be a miss. The snacks lie untouched, and for such a noisy film enthusiast, Loki is strangely silent.

The dark atmosphere of the scenes, what with most of them taking place at night for it is a vampire movie after all, does not help liven the mood; Stephen is conscious of the way Loki seems to be pulling away from him inch by inch, and by the time the end-credits roll across the screen, Loki is sitting by himself, huddled in the far corner of the long, three-seater couch.

“Loki?” Stephen calls his name carefully. “Are you alright?”

Loki does not blink. He does not move. He looks to be in a trance.

"Loki?" Stephen tries again.

“ 'Drink from me and live forever',” Loki says so quietly Stephen almost mishears him.

“What?”

Loki does not repeat after himself.

_Live forever._

“If only it were that easy,” Stephen says lightly. He waits for a scoff or a witty remark. Upon receiving no such response in the way of Loki-esque cleverness, he turns, only to find Loki staring at him with the most peculiar expression on his face.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Stephen asks suspiciously, for the look Loki is giving him is certainly not one of desire or lust. It does not even look playfully suggestive.

“Can you see it?”

Stephen’s heart begins to race, something it resorts to doing whenever Loki asks him dangerously vague questions like the one he is asking now. “See what?”

“The end?”

_The end of what? The movie? _

Stephen’s mind spins in a crazy whirl. _The world?_

When his sentient tongue goes one better, he averts his gaze. He doesn’t think he wants to look Loki in the eye when he answers the peculiar question with a no-less-peculiar question of his own.

“Mine or yours?” he asks softly.

Loki uncrosses his arms and clasps his hands in his lap.

Stephen studies his suddenly-stiff countenance. “You shouldn’t take lines from a movie so seriously, Loki.”

“It’s from the novel,” Loki answers softly. “Not the movie.”

“Guess I’ll have to take your word for it.” Stephen says quietly, playing along with Loki’s sudden deviation in subject matter. Loki may look calm, but his fantastical mind is probably running at a thousand leagues per second.

“Did you know Anne Rice’s given name was Howard?”

“Huh.” Stephen did not know that.

Loki hugs himself as if chilled. He rubs his hands up and down his arms absently before they cling to his own shoulders and go still. “I wonder what my name would have been.”

Stephen steals a curious side glance –

“Had I not left that rock.”

Loki has these bouts of melancholy sometimes. Stephen thinks he is getting better at pulling Loki out of them. But there are still days when he isn’t all that sure.

He shrugs. “You look like a Loki.”

Loki finally allows himself a grudging smirk. “_The_ Loki.”

“The one and only," Stephen acquiesces. He watches Loki quietly.

He wants Loki closer, but despite the slight lift of the heaviness in the air, the aura around Loki is not allowing access. He does not know if it is under Loki’s conscious control; until he does, Stephen can only wait impatiently until it drops.

“You would think after the death of his wife and child, he would have not wanted to go on living." Loki's voice sounds small. "Yet he did. He said yes.”

Ah. Loki is talking about Louis now, the protagonist, the one who gave in to the epicurean, three-hundred-something-year-old vampire Lestat, his Maker -

Loki sighs heavily. “He doomed himself to a life of eternal darkness and hunger, but it was life nonetheless. An eternal life.”

His eyes are suddenly deep wells of sympathetic sadness. “What a lonely soul.”

“Louis wasn’t lonely. He was clinically depressed.”

A look of irritation crosses Loki’s features. “I meant Lestat.”

“He wanted a companion. That’s why he turned Louis.”

His voice turns sharp. “He loved him.”

Stephen turns his head in utter surprise; the look of horror on Loki’s face is congruent with the nuance of shock in his voice, when they both realise that Loki is no longer talking about a fictional character.

Loki repeats softly. “He loves him.”

Stephen’s mouth is drier than ash. “Where is this coming from, Loki?”

The silence stretches the seconds into painful minutes.

Just as Stephen thinks Loki is never going to answer,

“Come now, Doctor. There is but a handful of beings in this universe who never seem to have much trouble following my train of thought.”

Loki finally glances at him out of the corner of one sad, sad eye. “You being one of them.”

Stephen finds it difficult to breathe for the sudden tightness in his chest.

“What are you offering me, Loki?”

“It _is_ that easy, Strange.”

Magic is dark and magic is light. Magic is death and magic is life.

Immortality is a spell away. The price?

Loki looks at the vein at his wrist, blue against the whiteness of the base of his thumb. “A lifetime. With me.”

Stephen does not believe his ears. His pride and sense of morality war with his primordial instinct to just say _yes, oh yes_

and against his wishes, Stephen Strange gives his answer.

“It is against the law of nature.”

  1. Silence in the Library

When Loki does not wish to be found, he will not be found.

Weeks go by without even so much as a word from him, let alone a kiss, stolen by invisible lips in the dark shadows of the library, once a recurring occurrence to the point of nuisance.

Stephen spends long hours in the library even when he does not need to look up anything in particular because he likes it there. It has nothing to do with the fact that the library was the first place they ever had – okay, it sounds gross now, but it really was kind of romantic at the time –

_(sex)_

There, he’s said it.

And no, he is not wallowing in self-pity. He is only here to read a book.

Stephen sighs. Nothing is going in.

He closes the tome.

He shoves himself off his reading chair and walks over to the bay windows. He peers out.

The streets are filled with people, of all colours and build, of all ages and walks of life.

None of them wears the face of the one he longs to see.

_Wait, is that -?_

Stephen presses his forehead to the glass for a closer look.

His heart sinks when the black-haired person waiting at the front foyer of an apartment building three storeys below turns –

The woman smiles as a man rushes up to her with a bouquet of roses.

Stephen palms the window pane directly in the path of his line of vision and places his thumb strategically over the woman’s face, blotting it out.

He imagines it is Loki he is seeing, but changes his mind when Loki, no, the woman, leans into her visitor’s kiss.

“ 'Whenever you know me to be alone, come, no matter what day'.”

A smile slowly breaks across his face, his heart suddenly as light as a feather, the sun brighter and warmer upon his skin. “John Keats.”

He need not turn around for he can just see it in his mind’s eye, the look Loki must be wearing on his face,

The quirk of his sculpted eyebrow, ink-black against the porcelain canvas of his smooth, ageless skin, as ageless as the sound of his crisp, clear voice –

“I’m impressed, Doctor. You know your poets.”

“Not literally like you do, I’m afraid,” Stephen admits.

“Not Keats, sadly, no.” Loki takes a step closer, stopping just beyond the reach of Stephen’s encroaching shadow. “He died too young, too soon.”

Stephen turns, the same time Loki takes the final step toward him –

As their outstretched hands meet, all barriers, physical and mental alike, break, and they fall into each other’s arms in a fierce, tight embrace.

“I had wanted to die for so long, Strange.” The familiar timbre of Loki’s voice rumbles against Stephen’s chest. “Then I met you.”

“I can’t live forever, Loki.”

Loki brushes off Stephen’s unspoken apology with a soft kiss to the greying hair at Stephen’s temple and a husky whisper. “Forever is for other people.”

“And us?” Stephen asks quietly. “What’s for us?”

“The moment.” The heat of Stephen’s human body stirs Loki’s arousal. The surge of desire burns his face and when Loki speaks again, he is breathless. “This moment.”

Stephen cannot agree more. This moment is theirs, and theirs alone.

“I’ve convinced you to stay then?” Stephen whispers. _Here? With me?_

“For as long as you have, yes.”

Stephen feels his heart break.

Loki does not know. He cannot know.

Stephen's eyes stray to the visible pulsation in Loki’s neck, throbbing in time with the steady beating of his heart Stephen could feel thumping away against their pressed torsos – and he decides it does not matter.

Years, months, days, hours, seconds –

They are simply details.

Loki is here _now_.

And Stephen will love him, cherish him, and make him happy.

He reaches up to thumb the wetness away from the outer corners of Loki’s eyes.

For as long as Loki has, Stephen will not make him cry.


	5. Creature of Comfort. Not./Diversionary

  1. Creature of Comfort. Not.

Loki is uncomfortable.

He never fidgets and he hates people who fidget.

But damn it, he is _uncomfortable_. If only he had not made that stupid promise to Stephen (forged in blood, no less) he would have made himself disappear the moment they arrived. Stephen may choose to come with him if he so wishes.

“You okay there?” Stephen asks with an ill-concealed undercurrent of glee.

“Peachy,” Loki grits through his teeth.

He glares at a dark-haired woman in a revealing, off-shoulder cocktail dress who has been blatantly stealing glances at Stephen from where she is seated two tables away to his northwest.

Out of nostalgia and not a lot of common sense, Stephen has accepted an invitation to the International Neurosurgical Conference Gala Dinner at a fancy (by Midgardian standards) hotel; his former paramour by the name of Dr Christine Palmer must have talked him into it, for it is not something Loki could picture Stephen doing, _fraternising_ with people.

Well, not since Stephen met him, at least.

Loki would have thought nothing of letting Stephen go it alone, for Stephen knows he hates these things – but that was until Loki learnt of the lifetime achievement award Stephen is going to receive. And Loki simply could not say no.

It may also have something to do with how breathtakingly handsome Stephen looks in his tuxedo.

Or the way Stephen drawled his name out with his sultriest, deepest voice.

_“Loki…”_

Loki does not remember the last time anyone got him to do anything he did not want to do, just by saying his name.

Loki sighs for what must be the hundredth time. And they haven’t even gotten to the speeches yet.

“Won’t be long now, Loki.”

Loki bares his teeth into what hopefully looks like a grin. It feels like a grimace. “Pish posh. I am enjoying myself.”

Stephen hides his own smile. He knows how much the whole affair is setting Loki’s teeth on edge. He is secretly touched Loki is still sitting here with him and has not disappeared.

He surreptitiously reaches for Loki’s knee below the table, just in case.

Yup. Loki is still here, in the flesh.

“Have I you told you how amazing you look tonight?” Stephen murmurs.

Loki’s grimace turns into a smile. Then it lifts at the corner into a smirk.

The lady is still _looking_.

Loki gives the woman one last scathing glare before turning to face Stephen fully.

Loki makes to pull back an invisible, errant curl and tucks it behind his ear as he buries his nose in Stephen’s temple, making sure she has full, unrestricted view to his lips as they brush against the sensitive lobe of Stephen’s ear. “Not as amazing as you, Doctor.”

Stephen sucks in a gasp when Loki snips at the soft cartilage of his ear –

Loki knows not if what he is doing is appropriate by normal, twenty-first century human convention, but clearly Stephen wants him here, despite knowing the risks.

In his defense, when he reluctantly agreed to come as Stephen’s plus-one, Loki did offer to come as a woman.

Stephen rubbished the offer with not so much disbelief as indignation.

_“Be as you are, Loki.” Stephen looked and sounded irritated. “Don’t change yourself for the sake of others. It is unattractive.”_

So Stephen wants Loki to just be Loki, huh?

His gaze strays to the bowtie at Stephen’s neck and wishes he could rip it off with his teeth.

Stephen, the nerve of him, is smirking.

Stephen, the bastard, knows what this is doing to him.

Well. Loki is not going to give him the satisfaction.

So many clever people in one room and yet not one of them has a single clue who he is. The curious glances thrown his way Loki drinks in with pleasure; with every appreciative look women send in his direction, Loki deepens the aura of mystery around himself.

He coquettishly lifts his wine glass and takes a dainty sip.

“Careful, Odinson. You haven’t eaten enough for that much alcohol this early in the evening.”

Loki scrunches up the tip of his nose delicately. A glance at the menu placard confirms his suspicion; for the number of courses they are serving, there is hardly anything he finds appetising enough and worth eating.

“Bacon-wrapped quail with strawberry merlot glaze seasoned with thyme and truffle oil – good _Lord_,” Loki mutters, mimicking his favourite human whenever he is frustrated or flabbergasted about something.

His favourite human only laughs.

  1. Diversionary

Two hours later, there is still no escape in sight. Stephen finds the crowd around him growing bigger instead of smaller. His initial apprehension about coming has long since vanished; he has not been the center of attention in a while and it scares him just how easily it is, slipping so effortlessly back into his old skin.

“I’m so glad you could make it, Stephen,” Christine Palmer says. “I haven’t seen you for so long, not since our wedding, was it, Jack?”

Dr Jack McKenna cuts a dashing figure in his dinner jacket, tall and strapping. He wraps an arm around his petite wife. “That’s what people do when they’re retired, darling. They go off-radar. Nothing short of the most prestigious award is going to draw them out.”

A photographer steps forward to take a photo of the three of them, and Stephen almost puts an arm around the back of Christine’s waist when he realizes it is not his place anymore. Luckily neither Jack nor Christine seems to notice his faux pas, and Stephen offers a sickly smile as the camera flashes.

_Loki_.

“Surely we can entice you back into the world of medicine?” A former colleague quips. “As honorary lecturer at our brand new medical school perhaps?”

“Teaching? Me?” Stephen chuckles uneasily. “It isn’t in my blood, I’m afraid –”

_Where is Loki?_

Stephen has not seen him since a group of former colleagues and fellow surgeons he knew from other hospitals cornered him on the way back to the table from the gents a half hour ago.

“We could use someone of your expertise at our teaching hospital,” someone else says.

“You fall off the horse, you get back on again, isn’t that what they say, Strange?” Someone he used to know and does not quite like says. “Should have insured those hands of yours.”

Stephen hears a gaggle of women laughing and he thinks they are laughing at him and at the hands and money he no longer has – before he can stop himself, he turns to look.

No, they are laughing at something Loki is saying. He has got his charmer smile on.

Gathered around his boyfriend at their table is a group of women, all respectable surgeons, experts in their own fields. And Loki has them wrapped around his little finger.

If only he is not too far away for Stephen to catch his eyes.

Stephen feels he is suffocating. He reaches up in the attempt to tug at his collar, but it never gets there for the slender arm that has suddenly slipped through his elbow.

“I’m sorry, were you talking to me?” he mumbles.

“Where you have you been, Stephen?” she purrs. It is the dark-haired woman Loki hated at first sight.

“Hello, Margaret,” Stephen sighs.

“Maggie,” she says coyly.

“Maggie.” He forces a smile. He knows it does not reach his eyes and hopes she notices it too and takes the hint.

She doesn’t. Worse, she pouts instead. “You never called me back. Didn’t I tell you not to be a stranger, Strange?”

Stephen does not remind her that the only reason why they had had dinner together that one time a long, long time ago was because they had been co-authors on a research article and they had worked late into the night and he was hungry.

“Stephen, isn’t that your friend?” Christine interrupts. “Is he alright?”

Stephen whips his head around and sees the ladies now swarming around the hunched form of his secret lover; one is loosening Loki’s collar, another is pushing his head in between his knees.

Stephen pushes Margaret’s arm away and makes his way to the table. “Loki?”

“He complained of sudden difficulty breathing –”

“I think it’s a syncopal attack – he did say he was feeling a bit stuffy.”

“It could be an allergic reaction, what was that last course, shrimp paté?”

“Food poisoning? There’s a staph outbreak going on in this part of town recently, our ER’s completely backed up –”

Stephen crouches in front of his boyfriend. “Loki?”

“I feel faint,” Loki murmurs. His face was ashen except for his unusually flushed cheeks.

“Jack and I are staying here tonight, Stephen. You can take him up to our hotel room if he needs to lie down for a while,” Christine offers.

Loki shakes his head. Stephen nods.

“No, thank you. I think we’ll just head ho – ” Stephen catches himself. “I’ll take him home.”

“I’ll call you a cab,” Jack is already out the door, heading for the main lobby.

Moments later, they leave in a taxi and the commotion behind. In the backseat, Stephen fusses at Loki’s neck and chest, feeling for his pulse and his temperature and breathing rate and everything else in between –

“Where to, brother?” The cabbie steals a glance at the rearview mirror and a look of regret instantly scrunches up his weathered, goateed face. “The hospital?”

“Please don’t die at the back of my cab, man…” Stephen hears him mutter; the cab driver is probably wishing he had not picked them up. 

Stephen is about to say ‘yes’, when a hand catches his wrist. His heart skips.

Brilliant green eyes peer from under half-closed lids.

Stephen heaves a resigned, yet relieved sigh. _Damn you, Loki._

“177A Bleecker Street, please.”

A snap of Loki’s fingers and a veil falls over them; now all the taxi driver sees if he were to look in the rearview mirror are two very well-dressed gentlemen sitting quietly next to each other, doing nothing. _Absolutely_ nothing.

Loki pulls Stephen’s lapels and just before their lips meet,

“You owe me, Odinson.”

“Oh no. You owe _me_.” Now the very picture of health, Loki is sprightly, very sprightly indeed, what with the way he is clawing Stephen’s tuxedo jacket off, then his white shirt, “You looked like you needed a little help back there, Doctor.”

“Well, thank you for coming to my rescue.” Stephen forgets all about being mad, and seizes Loki’s lips once more. He rips the hair tie off and there goes Loki’s neat ponytail – Stephen grabs a fistful of raven black hair and pulls Loki’s head back so he can properly and fully kiss his prince in shining armour.

Loki works on Stephen’s belt next, unbuckling it deftly.

“Here? Now?” Stephen asks breathlessly.

Loki’s own clothes he discards by magic, and all reservations leave Stephen at the sight and feel of Loki in all his glorious nakedness, wriggling underneath him in a delicious tangle of long, white limbs, neck and well-sculpted torso.

“I am as I am, Stephen,” Loki says mischievously.

The cab hits a bump and their foreheads knock into each other and they laugh.

Though Stephen is the louder of the two, his laughter dies first; yet the ghost of a smile remains. “I wouldn’t have you any other way, Loki.” 

And that is the truth.


	6. Pillow Talk

  1. Pillow Talk

“Stephen?”

Stephen’s eyes flew open. He had almost drifted off; the hearty dinner sat heavily in his stomach and was making him drowsy. “Hmm?”

“…nothing. Forget it.”

He let out a low growl. “Loki…”

“What do you see?”

A moment of silence ensued.

It was simply too late into the night to be playing the guessing game, even if Stephen almost always got it right.

“Do try to finish the question for once, my dear.”

The sudden absence of warmth against Stephen’s neck was alarming. He squeezed Loki’s arm. “Loki?”

It was a few seconds later that Loki’s chest began to rise and when he exhaled, it was with a mildly breathless, “In me?”

Dumbfounded, Stephen pulled back just the slightest, enough to look Loki down the line of his nose.

“What’s this all of a sudden?”

Loki said nothing. Since he was avoiding his gaze, Stephen did not have the luxury of reading the answer in the usually expressive green eyes.

“You want to know the truth?” Stephen asked quietly.

Reluctantly, Loki nodded, the sharp tip of his chin digging into Stephen’s collarbone.

With a gentle nudge of a finger, Stephen tipped Loki’s chin upward, not because it hurt, but he’d be damned if he could not look Loki in the eye when he said it –

The words died at the tip of his tongue. He frowned deeply.

_What is this fear I am seeing in your eyes, Odinson?_

“What are you afraid of, Loki?” He asked gently.

Loki’s eyes darted from side to side as they searched Stephen’s face.

Stephen wondered just what sort of expression he was wearing and if it was indeed what Loki was looking for. He held Loki’s gaze, determined to hold it for as long as necessary.

After an eternity, the light began to dim before it finally left Loki’s eyes.

Just when Stephen thought that was the end, that it was just another mysterious, million-dollar question to add onto the burgeoning stash of questions Stephen knew Loki was dying to ask but could not quite bring himself to, for fear of rejection or humiliation,

(which was totally _ridiculous_ for Stephen would never do either, not to Loki)

For lips that barely moved, his words, though quiet, were crystal clear. “Am I a passing fancy, Strange?”

The seconds came to a halt.

For a long, long time, it seemed as though neither of them was breathing.

When Stephen could not hold his breath and emotions any longer, he began to speak, as calmly as he could, despite his near-bursting chest,

“I am the Keeper of Time, Odinson.”

As self-explanatory as Stephen had intended his one-liner to be, it was missing the mark, for the look in Loki’s eyes could not be more desperate.

“For something so precious, do you think I would waste it on something as fleeting as a…” Stephen’s voice trailed as he searched for the right word; when he finally found it, it came across heavily-tinged with distaste. “_Fling?_”

In an instant, Stephen felt and saw the tension leave Loki’s body and the light return to his eyes. Loki sagged in Stephen’s arm, who tightened his hold around his lover in turn and fiercely kissed him on the mouth.

“Truly?” Loki asked breathlessly when they finally let each other go.

“I’m an all-or-nothing kind of guy, Loki,” he said just as breathlessly.

Loki stared at him, his expression a confounding jumble of sheer delight and wary hopefulness and trepidation.

Stephen’s heart ached. For someone who had lived so long, Loki should not be wearing that expression at all. It was the look of someone who had never truly known or been shown love…and it made Stephen inexplicably _angry_.

“Do you still want to know what I see?” Stephen’s thumb played with the high slope of Loki’s cheek. “When I’m with you?”

The fear returned to Loki’s eyes and Stephen chased it away with a touch of magic; a gentle press of his fingers to Loki’s temple and Stephen let the images flow through, to give Loki a taste, a glimpse, _just_ a glimpse –

“I see never-ending adventures…”

_Loki leaping from one giant red tingle tree to another, below him the sprawling Valley of the Giants, behind him, Stephen himself; no matter how he tried, the Cloak could not seem to fly him fast enough to catch up_

“A lifetime of memories.”

_Sitting shoulder to shoulder underneath the stars, watching the dance of a brilliant aurora across the sky_

“Endless possibilities.”

_of a future together –_

Stephen lifted his fingers off Loki’s temple at just the right moment, for there were only so many things he could divulge; he was no tease, and he was certainly no prophet.

He was just a man who had found something good in his life and wanted to hold on to it for as long as he could.

“What are you saying?” Loki whispered.

“I am saying that you…” He swept a stray lock of hair out of Loki’s eyes. “ – are precious.”

Stephen knew not if Loki was truly convinced; he could only hope he was getting close.

He closed his eyes and sought Loki’s lips in the dark. If he found them in one try, he was simply going to come straight out with it and say it -

He did. And so he must. “I am saying…”

Kissing Loki had never tasted so sweet.

“That I love you.”

Loki did not say it back. Stephen did not mind it, for he did not say it to have it returned. It would be a selfish thing to do.

It was enough that Loki was kissing him back with such fervour Stephen’s head slammed into the headboard behind him with a resounding thud.

It was enough that the slow and steady beating of Loki’s centuries-old heart picked up pace and thundered in his chest with each bold stroke of the tongue, hot and long and sweet -

Loki was enough for him. He needed no one else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mindless Self Indulgence. I can't.


	7. The Beach Boys

12\. The Beach Boys

“This is quite nice.”

Stephen takes that as a compliment. It is not very often that his mortal offerings please Loki at all.

“You seem to be liking those.” He watches Loki delicately tip another freshly-shucked oyster into his mouth.

“I have never had them quite so fresh before.” Loki smacks delectable lips that glisten in the morning sun. The breeze from the ocean lifts his hair off his shoulders, and Stephen wishes it was him Loki was eyeing, instead of the almost-empty platter.

“Want me to get some more?”

“Yes, please.” Loki’s eyes dance with delight.

Stephen scratches the air and the skipper with the crystal blue eyes and sun-kissed blond hair appears. “Yeah, mate?”

Stephen orders some more. There is no menu needed when the only menu he needs is the ocean in front of them, the clearest, bluest and purest he has seen in a long time.

“Prawns?” Loki nods.

“Scallops?”

“Sure.”

“Squid?”

“Why not.”

“Got some more of those oysters?” Stephen asks the Thor-lookalike.

“As much as you can eat, yeah I do.”

Stephen nods. “Don’t bother with the tabasco sauce.”

“Any drinks?”

Stephen decides this is a vacation, even if it is one the idea of which was born out of the blue. It is getting too cold in New York. “A cold lager for me. Loki?”

Loki shakes his head and simply slurps the juice out of an oyster shell.

Both Stephen and the Thor-lookalike laugh.

“First time here?”

“First time,” Stephen murmurs, still staring at the juice running down Loki’s forearm. As it pools at his elbow, it darkens the weather-beaten wood of the picnic table.

Stephen carefully wipes Loki’s arm with a napkin and slides it under the sharp tip of his lover’s elbow.

“This is nice,” Loki repeats. He squints into the distance at a few catamarans moored a few hundred yards from the pristine shoreline.

A beachfront lodge overlooking the Indian Ocean, a deserted beach, a gentle, October sun...

Stephen can momentarily forget who he is supposed to be. And from the relaxed lines of Loki’s usually sharp-pinched face, he has a suspicion the feeling is mutual.

“Did you have beaches on Asgard?”

Loki’s hands still. He stares at his half-peeled, freshly cooked prawn. It is not long before he shrugs and resumes his peeling.

“Of course we did.” Loki stares at the now-peeled prawn. Stephen is taken by surprise when Loki reaches across the table and holds the succulent prawn out expectantly.

Stephen dutifully takes it in his mouth. The delicious taste of fresh, juicy prawn meat explodes on his tongue.

Loki peels another and gets Stephen to eat that one too.

Stephen chews thoughtfully. Loki looks lost in thought.

Stephen hopes he has not ruined Loki’s appetite. He seldom sees Loki indulge in anything in such carefree manner; it would be such a shame if he should ruin it by asking unwelcome questions under the pretense of making conversation.

“I did not mean to upset you.”

Loki looks up from his bucket of chilled prawns. “What?”

Stephen lays a careful hand on the table. It is open should Loki choose to take it.

Loki does. “You did not,” he reassures.

Their skipper comes back with their order.

“Some fresh lobsters have just come in, mate.” He places the array of fresh seafood and Stephen’s ice-cold lager in front of them. “Would you like to try some?”

Stephen looks to Loki. To his relief, the light has returned to Loki’s eyes at the mention of his favourite crustacean.

“Grilled? Steamed? Mornay?”

Loki hesitates, looking almost shy.

Stephen recognises that look. “All three ways please.”

Their captain for the day only needs to take one look at the indulgent smile on Stephen’s face and he understands. “Right away, mate.”

Something catches Loki's eye.

“Stephen, look!” A school of fishes jumps in and out of the water. “Mullets!”

Loki points in another direction, and Stephen squints at the large black and white bird with a long grey beak and black little legs perched on the shoreline. If it weren’t for its long neck, Stephen would think he is looking at a penguin. In Western Australia.

“It’s a pied cormorant.”

Ah. That makes much more sense.

“You know a great deal about animals,” Stephen observes.

Loki blushes slightly. “I know a great deal about a lot of things.”

“I bet.” Stephen takes in the two spots of rouge on Loki’s white cheeks.

Loki is too pale. A tan would look great on him.

“Wanna go for a swim?”

Loki looks up at the sun. It may be gentle but the heat will catch up to him sooner or later.

At the hesitant look on Loki’s face, Stephen feels something in him give.

“Do you trust me?” he asks quietly.

“I…do,” Loki says haltingly.

“Come here.” Loki leans across the table, thinking Stephen is wanting to kiss him – he frowns when Stephen places the tips of his fingers to the sides of his face instead.

“Strange?” he asks uncertainly at the tingling, burning sensation on his temples.

“Shhh.” Stephen concentrates on the spell.

When he opens his eyes again, he finds Loki staring at him in wonder. Loki lifts up a milk-white arm and holds it out of the shade and into the sun. It does not burn.

“I’m all the protection you need, Loki.”

“Indeed,” Loki murmurs in agreement. What an exquisite cooling spell; he might as well be in an air-conditioned room.

Stephen is already walking toward the water. “Come on!”

Loki does not telling twice. He skips on the seashell-spattered beach across the sun-scorched sand and takes the hand Stephen is holding out behind his back.

They wade through the knee-high water for a while.

The sudden dipping of the seafloor under their feet catches Loki by surprise and he yelps when his whole body plunges in the deep water –

But he never splutters for Stephen’s strong arm is quick to catch him around the chest, holding his head above the water.

“You alright?” Stephen teases.

Loki laughs a wet, breathless laughter. “I did not expect that.”

“Expect what?” Stephen whispers huskily.

They are both excellent swimmers, but Loki chooses to give in completely, wrapping his arms tightly around Stephen’s neck.

“To fall so deeply,” Loki sighs.

Stephen’s hold around him tightens. Loki is weightless in the water. If he is not careful, the sea and

_everything else in the universe _

“ – will take you away,” Stephen mumbles to himself.

Loki closes his eyes. They float languidly in the water, letting the swirling gentle tide take them whichever way it wants to go.

The water pulls at them, tries to separate them, and this time, Stephen silently asks the Fates to make clear to him once and for all –

“Not if you don’t let it.” Loki’s answer comes not a moment too soon.

And this time Stephen need not hold on so tightly for it is Loki who does.

“Don’t let it, Strange.”

Stephen’s heart sings at the magic in the air, in the wind, and in the sea…

The magic in his arms.

“You are _mine_.”

Loki inhales sharply –

For his firm, unbending words, Stephen’s grey eyes are soft, so soft –

“You are mine,” he repeats, softly this time.

As expected, Loki says nothing. He does not need to, for his eyes, and lips are saying enough.

Stephen savours the sweet, salty kiss.

Nothing else exists.

_The world is ours_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loving all the kudos and comments guys. Golden. I heart them all. Thank you. ♡


	8. Kebab-oom Night/The Forbidden Fruit

  1. Kebab-oom Night

It was a good movie. At least, that was what the reviews said. If only Stephen could concentrate long enough to even get the gist of what it was about.

Not that Stephen was complaining.

The movie he could always replay. A cuddly, snuggly, clingy Loki? Now _that_ would only happen once in a blue moon. A blue, Jotunn moon.

Loki’s ice-cold hands slipped inside his T-shirt and roamed his chest, his belly, his back –

Stephen uttered a gasp. “Loki…”

Loki’s arms tightened around him.

A minute later, Stephen felt the weight of Loki’s head on his shoulder.

“You’re not even watching the movie, are you?”

Loki shook his head.

“Shall we retire to our room, then?”

Loki shook his head again.

Stephen frowned. That was unexpected. “What’s wrong?”

Loki pressed his body against the warmth of Stephen’s chest; any closer, he would be sitting in Stephen’s lap.

“Don’t feel so good,” he finally mumbled. Whenever he was feeling poorly, close proximity to his human boyfriend was the one thing he could count on to make himself feel better, even if by a fraction.

Stephen’s doctor instincts kicked in. “Where don’t you feel good?”

“My head hurts.” Loki nuzzled his forehead in the crook of Stephen’s neck. “And my stomach feels iffy.”

One of Stephen’s hands flew to the side of Loki’s head, the other to his stomach. “What, like a food poisoning kind of thing?”

Loki reared his head in alarm. “Someone poisoned me?”

Stephen winced. For tonight’s movie night, he had let Loki talk him into calling for a take-out, just for a change. Maybe Stephen should have cooked instead. The kebabs did look a bit suspicious.

“Not deliberately…” Stephen pressed Loki’s head into his shoulder and began massaging circles into Loki’s throbbing temple.

Loki breathed in deeply. The waves of nausea were getting stronger now. “How does someone even poison me unintentionally?”

Stephen let the question go unanswered. “Come. Let’s get you to bed.”

“Stephen, I don’t think I’m really up for anything – ”

“No, you silly goose,” Stephen cut him off. “I’d love to say I told you so…” His voice trailed off at Loki’s vicious glare, “But you can make up for it by letting me kiss all the owies away and make them better.”

“You can do that?” Loki asked pitifully.

“My dear Loki.” Stephen gave him a quick peck right between his eyes. “There is nothing I can’t do, when it’s for you.”

Loki stared deep into his eyes and into his soul. “If I didn’t feel like my stomach would crawl out of my mouth any second, I would take you right here right now, Doctor Strange.”

Stephen laughed. “Now that’s another way you can make up for it.” Okay, Loki was turning green now, like really, really green -

“But maybe later.” At Loki’s frantic nod, Stephen hastily helped him up. “Much, much later.”

  1. The Forbidden Fruit

“What’s all this?”

Loki dumped the content of the pouch onto the bed. He read the labels on the boxes one by one.

“Gas-X.”

“Lomotil.”

From out of nowhere, thirty or so bottles containing radioactive-coloured liquid tumbled out of thin air and onto the bed. “And Gatorade.”

“I’ve never seen you drink any so I wasn’t sure which flavour you liked, so I got one of each.”

“Where did you get –” Stephen did not know which question to start asking first, each one no less burning than the other, “How did you even know –”

Speaking of burning, his insides were starting to burn once more, and he supposed he’d better ask one complete question before it was time to pay a visit to the toilet again. But even at that, he was perhaps too ambitious –

“Who?” was all he could manage before he flew into the bathroom. He did not even manage to close the door behind him, good thing he had magic.

Loki winced at the sound of the door slamming, and Stephen’s painful moans as he emptied his bowels for the hundredth time since they woke up this morning. Who knew the mortal gut could hold so _much?_ And the last time Loki had heard something quite as thunderous as the sounds Stephen's belly was making when they were rudely awakened from a languorous post-coital slumber, Thor was chasing him all over Asgard after Loki turned him into a toad and kept him that way for a _week_.

Loki sighed wistfully. Those were the days.

“Bruce helped me.”

“You went to Banner?” Stephen hollered from inside the locked bathroom.

Loki spent a thoughtful minute pondering whether he should even tell his dreadfully-ill boyfriend who else at the Avengers Tower was privy to his current predicament.

Ah well. Stephen would find out soon enough.

Loki carefully placed the Iron Man hot water bottle on the bed.

“Stark was quite concerned about you too,” he offered, for better or worse.

“You told _Tony??”_

“Uh, I didn’t. He deduced it for himself.” Loki wrinkled his nose. “He really is quite smart, that one.”

Stephen groaned aloud.

Loki rolled his eyes. “I didn’t tell them _all_ the details…”

Stephen braced himself.

“I just told them you had the runs as loose and smooth-flowing as the Bosphorus.”

“Loki!!!” Stephen’s horrified cry was drowned out by the God of Mischief’s legendary cackles.

“The great Sorcerer Supreme...” Loki grew tired of waiting around while standing so he sat down on the bed and kicked his boots off. “Rendered as weak as a day-old kitten by –”

The door swung open. Stephen hung onto the frame, looking pale and shaky. “Loki…”

But Loki was far from done. “Dried fruits.”

“Not just any dried fruit –”

“_Apricots_.” Loki broke into peals of laughter. Who knew those innocent-looking delicacies could be so deadly?

Stephen did. They were the natural cure to constipation after all. He just did not think he had eaten that much.

Loki scooted over and patted the space he had just vacated.

Stephen sat down heavily on the bed. The abdominal cramps had finally subsided, but now he just felt _exhausted_.

He collapsed onto his back and groaned as he sank into the mountain of pillows Loki had miraculously conjured beneath him.

Loki studied his human lover’s pasty-white face as Stephen rubbed his alarmingly concave stomach, and felt something akin to sympathy stir in him.

“Are you alright, Strange?”

Stephen grunted a non-committal grunt.

A low, mournful growl emanated from somewhere in his middle region and Loki cooed a sympathetic coo; the next thing he felt was the heat of a hot water bottle pressed against his stomach.

“What the hell was I thinking.” Stephen cupped a hand over his eyes tiredly.

An awkward silence ensued. “I’m sorry, Stephen.”

“Why?” Stephen croaked weakly. 

“I did not mean for you to get sick,” Loki said sadly.

Loki loved his long baths, and Stephen thought today was as good a day as any to join him. Feeding each other morsels of love in between soapy kisses sounded like a good idea at the time.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Loki still looked like he was on the verge of tears.

“Hey, don’t look so glum. I think it’s all out of my system now. I’m so flushed out my insides are probably spanking clean and as shiny as a baby’s butt.”

Loki’s eyes glazed over. “I wish there was a manual for you,” he mumbled.

Stephen must have not heard him right. “What?”

Loki stared at him with big, doleful eyes. “I don’t know if I am doing it right.”

“It?”

“This. Us.” Loki fiddled with the hem of Stephen's sweat-dampened shirt. _“You.”_

“There is no right or wrong way of doing it, Loki.”

Stephen spelled away his lover’s irrational fears by pulling Loki’s hand to his lips and kissing the back of it gently. “I’m not going to break.”

Loki gave him a tight-lipped smile. “If you say so.”

Stephen reciprocated with a hard stare, as if daring Loki to look away. “Have I ever lied to you, Odinson?”

Loki’s smile wavered and his eyes watered. “You’re the only one who has never lied to me from the beginning.”

“And don’t you forget that.” At Stephen’s gentle smile, and even gentler words, Loki felt every ounce of tension leave his body, and he slumped forward, laying his head down on Stephen’s chest.

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?” he mumbled into Stephen’s T-shirt.

“Yeah. Get this thing away from me,” Stephen said, glaring viciously at the Iron Man hot water bottle.

Loki laughed and did as he was told, replacing the nuisance of a contraption with his own hand.

Stephen was pleasantly surprised at how warm it was; Loki’s hand was usually cold, bordering on icy.

“Babe?”

“Hmm?” Loki traced a circle around Stephen’s quivering belly button with the tip of a dainty finger, just the way he saw it on television –

“Next time we role-play Sultan and Consort in a Turkish Harem, can we do it with chocolates instead?”


	9. Tell Me A Story, Tell Me A Secret

15\. Tell Me A Story, Tell Me A Secret

As it turns out, the simplest case of food poisoning may not be all that simple at all.

Loki twists and writhes from the savage pain in his stomach, but still Stephen thinks it is too early to worry. Loki can be very dramatic when he wants to be.

When it gets so bad Loki begins to vomit green bile and _keen_ in agony, Stephen goes from mildly concerned to flat-out panicking in ten seconds flat; to her credit, Christine does not bat an eyelid to see Stephen suddenly appear in her office with a semi-conscious Norse god in his arms.

She does however, utter a gasp of surprise, when her ultrasound probe finds not just a swollen, inflamed appendix in impending rupture, but a complete set of reproductive organs one would only expect to see in a woman.

“_Human_ woman,” Stephen corrects. He hides that he has known all along, and looks down at his stuporous lover with new eyes. At least Loki has stopped screaming, now that the morphine has kicked in.

Christine lets Stephen scrub in as an observer but they do not speak of what they saw on the ultrasound, or what they are now seeing for themselves intraoperatively. The most important thing to do is to remove the appendix after all.

To all appearances, Loki’s engorged appendix looks exactly the same as a human one, and Stephen thinks he should apologise to Loki once he wakes up from surgery for not taking the pain seriously, since it must have hurt the same too (in other words, like hell).

When Loki’s fever finally breaks and Christine declares him fit for discharge, Stephen takes him home.

Loki hobbles over to the bed and lays himself down very carefully. He does not question Stephen’s decision to bring him back to The Sanctum, and Stephen does not ask why Loki does not wish for Thor to know of his illness and recent hospitalisation.

“Told him we went on vacation like you told me to.”

Loki grinds out a tight “Good,” and a chesty cough; he winces when it tugs at his wound.

Stephen helps him through the series of breathing exercises just like the physiotherapist ordered, to clear the remaining mucus and fluid from his lungs.

“Norns, how do you mortals do this?” Loki groans and recoils when Stephen thrusts a bowl of noodle soup in his face. He has never felt less like eating in his entire life, and that is saying a lot.

“Patiently and quietly.” Stephen fluffs another pillow and places it on Loki’s belly gently. He brings Loki’s arm across the front of his healing abdomen over the pillow. “No sudden movements. Christine will have my head if I let you tear your stitches out.”

At the mention of her name, Loki stiffens. He does not fault her, for she is a sweet, kind woman, and though Loki hates to admit it, she did save his life.

“Something troubling you?” Stephen quietly asks.

“Not…troubling, no.”

“Something on your mind, then?”

Loki looks at him sharply but says nothing.

“You know you can tell me anything,” Stephen reminds him.

“Does the liberty apply to asking you questions as well?”

“Sure.” Stephen shrugs. Answering is optional after all.

“Your…friend. The Woman.”

There it is, Loki has finally said it.

Stephen braces himself for what is to come.

“How did it end?”

Stephen is no mind-reader, but he has learnt enough of Loki’s body language to know the question his boyfriend is asking with his lips, is not the one he is asking with his eyes.

_Who ended it? Why did it end?_

“Amicably,” Stephen manages to say. His throat feels tight.

The look in Loki’s eyes sharpens and Stephen knows now he has to elaborate.

“We both wanted different things in life.”

Stephen half-expects Loki to wrinkle his nose, to scoff at how lame that sounds, but to his credit, Loki does neither; Stephen certainly does not expect Loki to shake his head slowly or to squeeze his hand gently the way he does.

“What you had to offer each other did not match. At the time.”

“At the time,” Stephen echoes because he agrees. “No, it did not.”

Stephen looks at their clasped hands. For all its gentleness, Loki’s grasp is firm, unyielding. _Mine_.

Stephen covers Loki’s knuckles with his other hand. _Yours_.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Loki asks fearfully with a sinking heart; Stephen is rejecting him and he does not even have the strength to walk, let alone teleport out of there –

“I almost got you killed.”

“What?”

“I should have gotten you to the hospital sooner,” Stephen confesses. “If your appendix had ruptured –”

“Stephen,” Loki cuts in. He conceals the relief in his sigh, masking it as exasperation. “I’m fine.”

Stephen runs his thumb over the bony row of Loki’s knuckles. “You scared me to death, Loki.”

“At least you knew what to do,” Loki says helpfully. “En Dwi poured his glass down my throat once when I was choking on an olive pit and he didn’t understand why the wine was coming back up.”

Stephen blanches. “En Dwi?”

“The Grandmaster.”

“The guy you met on Sakaar?”

Loki rolls his eyes. “Not just any guy. He is an Elder of the Universe.”

“Uh-uh.” Stephen is still stunned.

“He’s millions of years old but for all his celestial knowledge, he certainly didn’t know a _thing_ about first aid. Good thing the Valkyrie was around.” The hand not holding Stephen’s ghosts over his throat at the memory.

“This…En Dwi. Did he torture you?” Stephen demands, for Loki’s face has gone pale, the way it would on the rare occasions the name (Thanos) crops up in conversations.

“Oh no, no. He was…amicable.”

Stephen’s stomach flips lazily. Loki does not choose his words randomly.

“What did this Grandmaster offer you?”

It is a long time before Loki finally answers.

“He offered me a lot of things.” His eyes grow dim as they gaze into the distance, recalling what must be memories; pleasant or not, it remains to be seen. “A kingdom."

"Entire galaxies."

"Immortality.”

As Loki rattles off the list of rejected offerings, each more priceless than the one before, his voice becomes quieter and quieter, and Stephen almost misses the last one –

_“Children.”_

Stephen’s heart skips a beat.

“And yet you didn’t stay.” _With him._

“If he had stopped at planets I would have.”

Stephen remembers the potion he catches Loki drink before their coupling sometimes. He wonders if Loki has not done it on purpose, letting him see –

“And here I thought you left because Thor came for you.”

“I no longer chance my leaving or staying on another, Stephen.”

With that, Loki returns to the present, his eyes now alert and piercing. “Thor did not come for me in The Void. No one did.”

Loki feels Stephen’s hand jerk ever so subtly and regrets saying too much. Stephen is not ready for too much.

Loki loosens his grip, and waits for Stephen to pull away. When he doesn’t, Loki lets out a deep sigh.

“No, Strange. I left because had I given in –”

_(had a child by the Grandmaster)_

“I would never be able to leave.”

_Never_.

Stephen stares at the small, sad smile on Loki’s lips.

Loki offered him immortality once. No matter how much he wanted to, Stephen simply could not say yes, for it was a gift he could never accept.

Loki has not offered him anything else since.

What can Stephen possibly offer Loki in return? He has no throne, no kingdom, no wealth to his name.

Stephen stares into the unfathomable depth of Loki’s eyes and imagines its viridiance in someone else’s. Someone who wears Stephen’s smile but Loki’s dimples, Stephen’s light hair and Loki’s lighter skin.

Is he the world’s biggest fool, if he were to offer Loki the very thing the Grandmaster did, that made Loki leave?

Stephen does not want Loki to leave. Ever.

Stephen Strange is not En Dwi Gast. He is not an Elder of the Universe – his shelf life is hardly anything to speak of in the grand scheme of things.

But he is the Sorcerer Supreme, the Greatest of them all.

The Sorcerer Supreme does not lie, and Stephen Strange cannot lie to himself any longer, not about his own future.

“Jurien.” _After the very bay where Stephen once staked his claim on Loki’s love, its placid waters as blue as the sky_

“The name of our little boy one day.”

And if that does not make Loki want to stay -

“Araluen.” _After the secret garden in the gentle valley of the Australian Darling Range, the place where he would one day get on one knee amid blooming tulips…a sea of red, purple and blush, the very shade of Loki’s face when he finally says_

(_yes, oh yes _– )

“Our little girl.”

Loki’s face is marble still.

“What?” he breathes.

Stephen does not answer. His hand ghosts over Loki’s bandaged abdomen and senses the healing seidr circulating in Loki’s body, furious at work.

He probes deeper and sees with his mind’s eye the magic at Loki’s core, the one thing that makes Loki truly special and

“Precious.” Stephen says simply. He wonders if Loki would ever let Stephen call him that, as a nickname, as silly as it may sound.

At a loss for words, Loki can only repeat what Stephen has once asked him. “What are you offering me, Strange?”

_My heart. My home. My_

“Everything.”

“Everything?” Loki searches Stephen’s face. _What does that mean?_ The green eyes seem to scream.

“I will come to you, Loki.” Stephen cups the hollow of his cheek. “And I will come for you. If you’d let me.”

And still Loki cannot breathe, let alone speak. Tears blur his vision and clog his throat.

“What do you say?” Loki hears Stephen’s whisper, husky and full of _hope_ –

He blinks and his vision instantly clears.

It falls on the pile of books Loki has brought from his personal collection on the ledge of the bay window, leaning precariously against the glass.

Loki looks to the armchair right next to the window. It is identical to Stephen’s own (it was his idea to get matching reading chairs after all); draped over it is Loki’s own dressing gown, made of the finest Alfheimian silk, one of his few fineries that have survived Ragnarok.

He closes his eyes and thinks of the laughter of children he hears sometimes in his dreams, the laughter he only hears when he sleeps

_Here_. 

“In your arms,” Loki murmurs.

_Home._

Stephen’s forehead creases into a small frown.

Loki tips his face upward to kiss it away, for he knows Stephen does not divulge the things he sees to just anyone.

“I accept.”

Stephen smiles the most brilliant smile, and Loki feels all kinds of blessed for he has no doubt that he has accepted the best offer ever.

_“I accept.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name Araluen, means 'Water Lily' or 'Place of the Water Lilies' in Australian Aboriginal language.


	10. Mount Olympus

16\. Mount Olympus

“Saganaki cheese,” Loki read slowly, and not without a detectable hint of confusion.

He looked up and around the interior décor of the restaurant, and the confusion only deepened. “Is this a Japanese restaurant you have taken me to, Stephen?”

His green eyes widened in comical horror. “Oh dear, this isn’t one of those fusion restaurants I’ve heard too much about? You know I sorely dislike those places – I do so wish you Midgardians would get over them soon, preferably before the turn of the century.”

He blinked. "And why would I want to eat something that reminds me of flayed bodies and liquefied eyeballs?"

"That's _Nagasaki_, darling."

"Oh."

“It just means pan-fried, Loki. Comes from the word ‘sahan’, the Turkish word for frying pan, apparently.”

“Very good, Sir.” The waiter beamed at Stephen. “Highly-recommended too, it is our Chef’s specialty. We source our kefalotyri cheese straight from Olympus in Greece, there is simply no substitute for it.”

“I’ve been to Olympus. Beautiful place.” Loki sighed at the memory. “One of the best mountains to climb on Midgard.”

He handed the menu back to the waiter. “I’ll have the fried cheese from Olympus then.”

“Excellent choice, Sir.”

“You and your mountains,” Stephen mused. Then he frowned. To celebrate Loki’s swift recovery, he had talked Loki into going out with him for dinner in public; it was something they rarely did, for if Stephen prided himself as being a private person, he had certainly found his match in Loki.

Stephen had been hoping with the return of Loki’s good health, that his boyfriend’s appetite would return with it, as fickle as it may be. “Is that all you’re having? I thought you were hungry.”

“I am.” Loki leaned his forearms across the table and peered at Stephen under long, lazy lashes. “Surprise me.”

“Okay…” Since Stephen had perused the menu online beforehand, he had a rough idea what he could order that both he and Loki would probably like.

“We’ll have the vegetarian meze platter for starters…do you want the taramasalata, the spicy feta or the smoky eggplant dip for your pita?”

Loki only stared at him expectantly.

“All three dips then,” Stephen concurred. Loki loved his bread and he could have it three ways if he liked.

“And for my main course…I think I’ll have the spanakopita, please.”

“Eating light tonight, Doctor?” Loki asked with a tone of mild concern. “Please, don’t hold back on my account.”

“There’s nothing light about a pie stuffed with spinach and cheese, Loki.” Stephen gave him a reassuring smile. “We can always order more if it isn’t enough.”

And while Stephen still remembered, “Oh, and some grilled octopus please.”

“Small or large, Sir?”

Stephen hesitated, but only momentarily. “What the hell. Make it large.”

There was nothing he loved more than seeing Loki heartily tuck into his food, and seafood would certainly do the trick. If Thor was a meat guy, Loki was the complete opposite.

Furthermore, what with the kebab incident and all, he doubted Loki would appreciate the smell and taste of meat so soon after, even if Stephen did try to explain that it was not the kebab’s fault that Loki had landed in hospital.

“Would you like anything to drink?”

“What would you recommend?”

“If I could entice you with our award-winning white Assyrtiko from the beautiful island of Santorini?”

Stephen looked to Loki who gave a noncommittal shrug. _Right. Because who hasn’t been to Santorini_.

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Stephen handed the menu over back to the waiter. “Why not.”

Loki appeared lost in thought as he watched the endless stream of people walk past him in the streets.

“Loki.” He reached out for Loki’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

Loki snapped back to the present and bestowed upon him the wariest of glances. “I don’t think I like where this is going. I can think of no reason why anyone should apologise to me.”

Stephen shook his head in amusement. “No. I’m just – I wish I could take you somewhere. Somewhere special.”

“Strange.”

“Yeah?” Stephen watched as their thumbs danced across each other’s knuckles.

“Special is wherever you are.”

“Do you really mean that?” Stephen asked quietly.

Loki’s only answer was a mysterious smile, its meaning up to anyone’s interpretation.

By nature, Stephen was a perfectionist. To live up to his own standards, Stephen had always been unnecessarily hard on himself, and he knew it. It was a trait he did not mind not losing. “I promise I’ll take you wherever you want to go after I’m done overseeing the new recruits over at Kamar-Taj.”

“Tut tut, Sorcerer Supreme,” Loki chastised lightly. “No talk of work at the dinner table.”

“My apologies, Highness.”

“There is hardly any place worth seeing on this Earth that I have not seen, Doctor. Don’t bother yourself.”

“Surely that is not true. With global warming, climate changes, rampant deforestation…the Earth doesn’t look quite the same now as it once did.”

Loki was quiet for a while.

“What I long to see…no longer exists, Strange.”

Stephen tried to trace the line of Loki’s gaze, but it was too far off into the distant stars for him to follow.

He tried his best to see beyond the smog-filled stratosphere for a glimpse of what Loki must be seeing in his mind’s eye.

“Would you like to?” Stephen asked quietly. “See it again?”

“Asgard is no more, Doctor.”

Loki was still looking up at the night sky, his jaw clenched tight despite the softness of his voice, the mellowness of his words.

There was not a star to be seen in New York tonight, but Stephen doubted that was what Loki was looking for. “It is only a fool’s hope that I wish it isn’t so, just so _you_ could see it.”

No. Stephen was not going to let the promise of an enjoyable date night go to ruin.

“Hey.” Stephen reached for Loki’s hand once more. “Loki, look at me.”

Loki turned his head very slowly.

He looked down. As if only realising that they were holding hands, the light began to return to his eyes, and the glazed look began to leave.

“I’m sorry, Stephen. My mind seemed to have wandered off.” Loki squeezed Stephen’s fingers in return, his grip desperately tight. “You were saying?”

Stephen covered their clasped hands with the other. It seemed to ground Loki further, and the absence left his eyes entirely.

“Wong said to thank you for your help with the Sanskrit scroll,” Stephen expertly changed the subject. “Thanks to you, he’s caught quite a few wandering souls with the containment spells you helped translate.”

A small laugh.

“Tell him it was no trouble at all…but Doctor –” Loki’s eyes flashed once, green and golden. “No work talk, remember?”

“Alright then. What would you like to talk about?” They should settle on a topic of conversation pretty soon; Stephen had not had dinner yet, but boy, was he ready for dessert. Loki looked especially delectable tonight with his hair pulled back into a ponytail. It was a look he seldom wore (which Stephen thought he totally should, like, all the time, for look how it emphasised the sharp angles of his face…and those cheekbones!)

Loki’s choice in casual clothes, though unusual, exuded his exceptionally fine taste, and Stephen would have approved had he not known the real reason why Loki was wearing a turtleneck, cashmere in the most gorgeous shade of hunter green it may be.

No matter how hard Loki tried to conceal the bruises, no glamor spell could get rid of them, not for any measure of time.

_Finally Death has left its mark on me,_ Loki had jokingly said once.

A permanent tarnish on an otherwise pristine canvas.

Loki traced his finger along the rim of his glass of water thoughtfully. “We don’t have to.” At Stephen’s inquiring gaze, “Talk, I mean.”

Stephen’s forehead furrowed further.

“I just want to look at you,” Loki said simply.

Against his will, Stephen felt his face burn. He cleared his throat, clearly embarrassed. “So. You’ve, uh, you’ve been up Mount Olympus?”

“Yep,” Loki said cheerily. He was clearly enjoying Stephen’s embarrassment. “Many times.”

“Who with?” Stephen mumbled, lifting his glass to his lips to take a long, long sip of water. Shielding his eyes was no good, for he could still feel the intensity of Loki’s gaze upon his face.

“Apollo.”

Stephen nearly choked on his water. “Apollo as in…_The_ Apollo? Of Greek mythology?”

“The Greek God of Music and Poetry, yes.” Loki rattled off Apollo’s long list of credentials, sounding utterly bored, “And of Art, and Medicine, and Healing, and the Sun and the Light, and I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t be bothered to list them all.”

Stephen stared. “No.”

“No, what?” Loki asked blankly.

“It’s all just a myth.” Stephen shook his head. “You’re pulling my leg.”

“You do not believe me?” Loki asked teasingly.

Stephen did not answer.

“Apollo taught men the art of medicine.” Loki gave him an almost challenging look. “You’re a medicine man. It seems to me, Apollo deserved at least some recognition.”

Stephen still looked sceptical.

Loki leaned across the table.

“Ten years ago, you didn’t know I existed.” He openly searched Stephen’s face. “Now depending on how the night goes, not only are we to share dinner, we will or will also not be sharing a bed tonight, as we have shared one for the past three years.”

Loki leaned back in his chair, looking as smug as hell. “Some things you have to see for yourself, some things you don’t. It’s what you Midgardians call faith, I believe.”

“Three years.” Stephen’s insecurities about Apollo being real or not, and the kind of relationship this may-or-may-not-be-mythical Apollo might have had with Loki if he was indeed real, disappeared.

A wistful smile graced Stephen’s lips. “How time flies.”

But Loki did not share his enthusiasm. “It’s a heartbeat,” he said softly.

Stephen looked at him sharply, but Loki chose that moment to break all eye contact. “Loki…”

“The food’s here,” Loki said abruptly, his face lighting up with a smile. It was false, through and through.

“Maybe you were a bit ambitious after all,” Loki said slowly after the server had finished laying out the table with all the dishes Stephen had ordered.

“Just a bit,” Stephen agreed with a self-deprecating grin. “Can’t blame me for being happy that you’re finally back on your feet.”

Loki only rolled his eyes. Speaking of feet, an ice-cold ankle began gliding up and down Stephen’s pant leg. “I am still healing inside you know.”

“Don’t worry,” Stephen heard himself say. “We can do this.”

Blank-faced, Loki delicately picked an olive from the meze platter, looked at it critically, and popped it into his mouth.

“It’s good,” he mumbled finally.

Stephen tore a small piece of fluffy, smoking-hot pita bread and scooped a dollop of creamy, spicy feta onto it.

He swallowed the first bite without much chewing. “Oh, that’s good.”

He repeated the process, and held the tasty morsel out for Loki to try. “Here.”

Loki obliged, and his face lit up slightly. “Tastes like spicy hummus. Only richer. Smoother.”

“Want some more?”

“Yes, please.” Loki must have gotten used to Stephen’s force-feeding him when he was recovering post-surgery; it was the only way Stephen could get him to eat.

Loki caught the tips of Stephen’s fingers with his lips with the next offering, and Stephen’s breath caught in his chest. It was just as well, for the tzatziki was a little runny and the yoghurt was trickling down the side of Stephen’s little finger.

Loki licked it clean.

Stephen did not realise he was still holding his breath.

“Everything tastes better with you.” Loki peered at him in wonder. “Why is that?”

“Yeah?” Stephen reached across the table to run his thumb along Loki’s lower lip where a smear of dip had left its mark. He savoured the tangy taste on his tongue. “Everything tastes better with you too.”

Loki’s smile, forced and false before, was now hauntingly beautiful in its bashful serenity and contentment.

They soon found themselves immersed in a companionable silence as they concentrated on their meal. Stephen found his filo pastry deliciously flaky and decadent. He did not realise he had devoured half of his main course before he remembered to ask Loki how his exotic cheese dish was.

“How is it?”

“Delightful.” Loki’s eyes danced at the explosion of flavour in his mouth: the firm yet gooey cheese was unapologetically salty, and it played off wonderfully against the wholesome sweetness of organic honey and the aromatic crunchiness of the crumbled walnuts.

“I know not if this is better suited as an entrée or dessert, but I can eat this every day, any time.”

“Good.” Stephen nodded approvingly. He tried not to let his relief show; perhaps he had been too hard on himself. The prerequisite of going out with someone like Loki, it went without saying that there were expectations Stephen needed to meet, but Loki had liked all his mortal offerings thus far. “I’m glad you like it.”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t. It’s rich, savoury, sweet, salty all at the same time – it may be Greek, but it tastes strangely New York. You have neither the patience nor the time to be just one thing, so you be everything all at once.”

Stephen could not help staring at Loki’s honey-glistened lips as Loki took another bite of the fried cheese. He looked to be in a hurry to finish it; the waiter did say to eat it while it was still hot.

“Here. Try some.” Loki speared a generous cut of cheese with his fork, scooping up some honey-covered walnuts with it.

“Oh that is _sinful_,” Stephen mumbled around a mouthful or honey-laden cheese. He had no idea why he was expecting it to taste like cheesecake. He was not sure if he liked it, but when Loki offered him another forkful, he ate it all the same, and decided it was not so bad after all.

“Sweet and salty.” Stephen wiped the excess honey off his lips with a napkin. “Perfect combination.”

Loki pushed the half-eaten cheese dish away and pulled the platter of grilled octopus closer to him with a gleeful “Mine.”

“It's all yours, honey,” Stephen said absently, working his way diligently through the remaining half of his spinach and cheese pie.

“Oh my,” Loki sighed in sheer bliss after the first bite. “This has got to be the most tender octopus I have ever eaten.”

“So they did it right?” Stephen asked, just to confirm, for Loki’s exacting palate was legendary. Many a times he had had to send dishes back; it was one of the things Stephen had to endure and be ready for whenever they would eat out in restaurants.

“Spot-on.” Loki smacked his lips. “I am not sharing.”

“Take it easy,” Stephen reminded. “You are still healing inside. You said so yourself.”

Loki being Loki, chose to ignore him pointedly and completely. Not even when the waiter came over to refill their wine glasses did he look up from his beloved grilled octopus.

They ate their meal in relative silence, until Stephen looked up to see the entire dish, large enough for a group of four, almost entirely gone. He hurriedly reached over with his fork to steal the last remaining piece of octopus from Loki’s plate,

– and accidentally knocked over his glass of wine, spilling it all over the table and all over himself.

“Oh, shit –”

Loki tsk-tsked, clucking his tongue. “Serves you right, Stephen.”

Stephen tried to wipe his lap before it got completely soaked through but he was not quick enough. In frustration, he threw the wet napkin back onto the table.

Loki pushed his chair back and rose slowly. “Let me.”

Stephen sighed. “It’s alright, Loki. It’s only wine.”

With a touch of his finger to the linen table cloth, Loki spelled the large wet spot spreading on Stephen’s side of the table away.

Stephen followed Loki with wary eyes as his tall, striking boyfriend made his way slowly toward him.

Before Stephen knew what was going on, he found himself burdened with a lapful of Loki, and the annoying wetness in his pants turned into something else altogether…something akin to a stirring, hot and urgent and _painful_.

Loki must have felt it too, for he wasted no time wrapping his arms around the back of Stephen’s neck. “It’s been a while, Stephen.”

“It has been, hasn’t it.” Stephen rubbed his hand up and down Loki’s belly gently. “I’ve missed you.”

He nosed his way into the crook of Loki’s neck, nudging the turtleneck away from Loki’s jawline. “Missed you a helluva lot.”

Stephen did not need to open his eyes to know that no one was watching, for he could sense the magic bristling the invisible walls of the Mirror Dimension around them.

Gifting Loki with his own sling ring was not a decision Stephen had made with no debate, internal or external; some of his fellow Masters were quite vocal and territorial about what should only be the prerogative of an ordained Master of the Mystic Arts.

There must be something about having the notorious God of Mischief come to their rescue and save their asses on more than one occasion that spoke louder than words, for they had since stopped talking now, for better or for worse.

“Every time Apollo heals, he would grant the ill a wish.” Loki nuzzled the white hair at Stephen’s temple. “You want to know what I wished for, Stephen?”

Stephen nodded, the tip of his chin digging into the spot where Loki’s neck met his shoulder.

“I wished for _you_.”

Suddenly it mattered not if Apollo was real or just the creative product of human imagination.

Loki was _his_.

“Now it’s your turn,” Loki whispered urgently in his ear, hot and breathy. “Make a wish, Doctor.”

Stephen did not have to think very long. In fact, he did not have to think at all.

“I wish for a place in your heart. A place never occupied by anyone else."

"A place that is mine." _And mine alone_.

Loki went absolutely still.

Just when Stephen thought Loki was never going to speak,

“Say my name,” Loki murmured.

Stephen had never been surer of anything. 

“Loki.”

It was a whirlwind.

All of a sudden, Loki’s lips were locked onto his, the fruity undertones of the wine he had drunk sweet and oaky on his tongue.

“Loki…” Stephen breathed out, slipping his hands inside Loki’s sweater, needing to feel the touch of Loki’s skin as he returned each of Loki’s kisses with more fervour, desperation, and longing –

Loki shuddered. There was just something about the way Stephen said his ancient name that never failed to send chills running down his spine.

“Wish granted," Loki whispered breathily as he surged against Stephen’s upper body, his loins burning with urgency and drowning Stephen with the icy fire of his lust.

“_Loki_.”

And it was done. 

“Sealed,” Loki murmured, the gold dissipating slowly from his eyes as he breathed out the residue of the ancient spell.

Stephen’s heart stuttered. 

_What does that mean - _ _?_

“Loki, if you don’t feel the same –”

_it would kill me_.

“You misunderstand me.” Loki gripped the sides of Stephen’s face and touched their foreheads to each other, And for one brilliant, shiny moment, Stephen could _see_ Asgard, as golden and resplendent as it had stood and he gasped –

Only for Loki to steal the breath right out of his chest with a deep, searing kiss.

"I am _yours."_

Never had Stephen been more reluctant to break away from a kiss before but his chest felt near bursting, a consequence of holding his breath too long...or simply from the mounting desperation for an affirmation -

"Pinkie swear?" Stephen asked breathlessly.

And Loki of once-Asgard laughed. And laughed and laughed. "Oh, Doctor..."

“_You had me at halloumi_.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My favourite Greek restaurant has that last line painted on the wall. I laughed and poof, there's a new chapter. Magic!
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](https://finnlaily.tumblr.com) for more Strangefrost loving~


	11. Our Moment

17\. Our Moment

For a human, Stephen is possessed of a beauty so fine Loki has only ever seen the likeness of which once or twice throughout his long life thus far.

It is in the shy morning sunlight peeking through the day curtains that Stephen’s masculine beauty is most pronounced, and Loki is tempted, oh so tempted, to cast a little spell, an innocent one really, just to keep Stephen asleep for a little longer.

Loki kisses Stephen softly on the cheek closest to him. Feather-light, his kiss barely grazes the growing stubble he has no doubt Stephen will groom to its usual immaculate perfection once he wakes.

Stephen does not stir.

Loki kisses him on the other cheek. Again, his kiss is wispy, but this time it lasts for a few seconds longer. Stephen smells different before and after he showers. Good different.

He knows now the type of kisses Stephen will awaken from, the ones Stephen will not. So he decides a little boldness does not hurt, and he plants one on Stephen’s nose, arguably where Stephen is most ticklish.

Stephen does not so much as crinkle his nose. Either he is getting better at playing dead, or he really is tired.

Loki admits he may have been a bit more demanding than usual last night. It is not often that he lets Stephen talk him into sleeping over at The Sanctum. (Loki has developed a phobia of one of Stephen’s sorcerer friends walking in on them after one of them did just that – oh who is he kidding. There is only one friend of Stephen’s that matters)

Suffice it to say that Stephen and Wong finally got down to sitting and drafting that blasted roommate agreement once and for all, but if privacy is the determining factor, Asgard is hardly any better.

Servants gossip. Thor teases.

At least, here at The Sanctum, they can delude themselves into thinking that sleeping in is feasible, now that Wong has been given a 6 hours’ notice before Loki’s arrival to prepare himself, mentally and emotionally, and if he could refrain from knocking on the Sorcerer Supreme’s door for the next 24 hours, it would be very much appreciated.

Unless of course, the world is ending and people are dying and should Wong find himself unable to cope on his own, then by all means, knock away.

‘Sounds like a reasonable caveat,’ was Loki’s dry response.

It is barely seven, but Loki is wide awake. He intends to spend the next half hour or so mapping out all the sharp angles of Stephen’s face, leaving invisible marks here and there for Stephen to find later once they are back in their respective world.

Loki is well-practiced at placing the centre of his gravity just so he could kiss the hard-to-reach places without crushing his lover with the sheer weight of his body, but as he cups the side of Stephen’s head gently to drop a kiss between the heavily browed eyes, Loki realises there is not much he can do about his hair as it falls in a cascade of dark ringlets all over Stephen’s face.

Loki stills and prays that Stephen does not wake.

He does not.

Loki smiles.

He lifts his head and with it, his unruly curls, and the shroud of shadow from Stephen’s face.

Loki’s smile wavers. His fingertips ghost over the crow’s feet at the outer corner of Stephen’s eye.

He fingers the white hair at Stephen’s temple, made all the whiter by the fast-encroaching rays of sunlight.

How could he have missed it?

How could three years have turned something Loki found so sexy, endearing, only slightly grey when they first met, to something so cruel, so unapologetic?

Loki feels sick to his stomach.

No. He does not want to see it. Not now, not ever.

Without realising what he is doing, Loki’s hand begins to warm with a soft, green glow. But before he can breathe the word to the spell, a hand catches his wrist –

The spell sputters out of Loki’s control and dies.

“No,” Stephen says softly.

Loki opens his eyes and comes face-to-face with a hardness he has never seen before in Stephen’s blue-grey eyes.

“Don’t you dare.” Stephen releases Loki’s wrist like it is a piece of hot coal.

After a long, awkward silence,

“What were you trying to prove?” Stephen asks quietly.

Loki does not answer.

“Is it so difficult for you to accept that we are...different?”

“That is not what this is about,” Loki says in a low growl.

“It certainly looks like it to me,” Stephen murmurs dangerously.

"Well I guess there is no point in trying to convince you that it was but a bit of harmless fun now, is there?" Loki says lightly, pushing himself off Stephen entirely.

"Was it?" Stephen follows him with his eyes. "Harmless?"

Loki refuses to meet his gaze as he walks his knees across the bed, bargaining for the widest berth he can.

“I walked into this relationship with my eyes open, Loki. I know what I am and I know what you are."

Loki's head snaps up as if stung.

"I do not envy your longevity, nor do I long for it beyond the reassurance that I will not be around to watch you die -”

“But you would have me watch you?” Loki interrupts.

“I am a man, Loki. Of flesh and blood,” Stephen attempts to reason. “You said so yourself, if a moment is all we have, then...so be it.”

Loki shuts his eyes. “It is not enough.”

Stephen pushes himself up to a sitting position. “What would you have me do? Seek out Dormammu as The Ancient One did?”

“I would have you not age, but since that is an impossibility, I’d rather you hid the cruelty of the truth from me, at least for as long as I am in your bed!”

Stephen’s eyes flash angrily. “Age _is_ cruel!”

He grips the side of his head. “_This_ is what decay looks like, Loki. Don’t throw yourself into disillusionment just because you do not like what you see!”

Loki bares his teeth. He viciously pushes himself up and swings his legs down the side of the bed. “You’re _impossible_.”

Stephen cannot believe his ears. “_Excuse_ me?”

“I am not a child, Stephen,” Loki snarls, tying his robes around himself angrily. “And I am no stranger to Death, either. I know enough of it to know that you humans have been lying to your dying ones and to yourselves since the beginning of time _itself_.”

“What the _hell_ are you talking about?”

Loki draws in breath after ragged breath. “You glorify death as a form of eternal rest and peace, a noble act, a rightful end to an enduring legacy." 

"And you tell yourself that whoever it is you’re hoping to see, will be waiting for you on the other side,” Loki grinds through clenched teeth. “Well, guess what? They didn’t!”

Loki throws himself into an armchair and hides his eyes with a hand.

Stephen’s face feels numb. His tongue feels tingly.

This Stephen Strange who claims to love Loki Odinson would never say something so cruel…would he?

When he finally speaks, he does not think he sounds like himself, not at all.

“Just because you did not see your Mother does not mean I will not see mine.”

Loki’s hand falls away from his face.

Stephen half-expects Loki to fly into a rage, slap him even –

But to his bewilderment, Loki does no such thing.

He only hugs his arms around his middle and holds himself tightly.

“Of course. How very selfish of me,” Loki mumbles.

Loki's eyes have taken on the increasingly familiar thousand-mile gaze, the sight of which Stephen has come to hate for it means Loki is somewhere he can not reach.

“Loki…”

“Would you like to see her?” 

“Who?”

“Your mother.”

“You don’t know what she looked like,” Stephen says numbly.

** _I_ ** _ don’t remember what she looked like. _

Loki looks up very slowly.

“_You_ do,” Loki said serenely, knowingly. “And you _do.”_

_Remember_, the empty eyes seem to say.

Stephen shivers. The chills have nothing to do with the morning breeze blowing in through the open window.

Of _course_. If Loki can transfer the dazzling images of long-lost Asgard into his brain, how hard can it be for Loki to pluck something from the deep recesses of his memory on his way out?

“Why?” He asks shortly.

Loki only looks at him sadly.

When Loki does not speak, Stephen feels something ugly and dark and hot flare deep within him. He clambers out of bed and his silhouette towers over Loki, dark and sinister.

“A glamour only works so much covering up my cosmetic flaws, Loki, just as you impersonating my dead mother can only work so much erasing what is left of my memories of her,” Stephen spits out.

“No, that is not my intention!” Loki says heatedly. “Not at all!”

Now it is Stephen who looks close to tears.

“Then how could you even – ” Stephen cannot speak.

Something in Loki shatters into a million pieces.

When the hollowness in his chest begins to ache at the sight of Stephen’s wet eyes, Loki realises that his black, black heart is just as fragile as his mind and the rest of his body and is capable of breaking just the same.

He longs to hold Stephen, to apologise, and if Stephen could excuse his insanity, just this once for Loki has clearly misspoken and knows not what he is saying –

But that would mean lying, and lying to Stephen at this stage is unthinkable.

So Loki should tell him the truth, and nothing but the truth.

“Perhaps once you’ve seen her…” Loki whispers. “You would…reconsider.”

He buries his face in his hands. “Staying with me. For just a little bit longer.”

_Oh, for shame, Loki._

“How can you promise me children, and then speak of leaving?”

Stephen stands stock-still. His pale face turns stricken with grief.

“Oh, Loki…”

As there is no space for both him and Loki, Stephen sits cross-legged on the floor in front of the armchair and hauls Loki out of it. As if all strength has left him, Loki lets Stephen gather him in his arms, where Loki sags like a sack of bones.

“How did we fuck this up?” Stephen murmurs into the top of Loki’s head. “All this over my stupid hair?”

Loki begins to shake.

“I’m sorry if I overreacted.” Just like Loki has done to him not an hour ago, Stephen kisses Loki’s cheeks, his forehead, his lips – with each consequent kiss he grows more desperate and frantic. “I can say the stupidest things sometimes.”

“I never meant to hurt you.” Stephen thumbs the tears away, but the more he wipes, the faster they flow. "Please don’t cry…”

Loki only cries harder.

Stephen holds him tighter.

“I can’t tell you what I see. In my future. In yours.” Stephen kisses their foreheads together. “But know this…”

“There is no universe where I leave you alone before my time, or you me before yours.”

Loki’s tears freeze half-way down his alabaster cheeks.

And for Stephen is far from done with his vows,

“There is no universe where I do not love you.”

Loki gives one final sob –

“Now will you finish what you started and just kiss me?” Stephen begs.

With lightning speed, Loki does as he is told and Stephen dies a little inside for Loki’s kisses have never tasted so sweet, so yearning and Stephen does not think he has ever felt more loved than he does right this moment.

And maybe, just maybe, he can keep this illusion from shattering for just a moment longer.


	12. New York Minute, Part I

  1. New York Minute, Part 1

“Good morning, Stabby.”

Loki wrapped his long arms around the back of Stephen’s neck and returned the greeting in a voice husky from the remnant of sleep. “Good morning, Second-Rate.”

“Careful there, stranger.” Stephen’s throat bobbed up and down as he chuckled. “I’m not very magic before my morning coffee. Can’t promise where my portal would take you this time.”

“Don’t care.” Loki’s long lashes tickled the side of Stephen’s neck as he blinked lazily. “As long as you fall in with me.”

“I could be convinced.” Stephen brushed his lips against the crinkled outer corner of Loki’s smiling eye. “Where would you like to go?”

Unconsciously Stephen braced himself for responses true to Loki-esque fantasticism; so far, he had taken Loki to the Qikiqtaaluk Region in Nunavut, Canada, the northernmost inhabited settlement in the world, followed by a short jaunt to the Argentinian bay of Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world.

And that was only the beginning; what free time Stephen could spare in his tight schedule amid his Sorcerer Supreme duties, he dedicated it to taking Loki on an adventure, big or small, depending on what was next on his list of the hidden wonders of the world.

The Benaue rice terraces in the Philippines proved to be a hit, as did the hauntingly beautiful and aptly-named Tunnel of Love in the Ukrainian city of Klevan. Loki’s favoured colour was green after all.

The beech tree tunnel, famously known as the Dark Hedges in the parish of Ballymoney in Northern Ireland, had been an instant favourite too. Loki had looked up at the canopy of intertwining boughs in wonder and said, “This looks very familiar.”

Then his green eyes lit up. “Hey, this is The Kingsroad!”

He twirled around in the direction of the family house built by the owners of the property some two hundred years ago. “That way takes us all the way to Castle Black! Oh let’s, Stephen!”

Stephen rolled his eyes. “You do know that Game of Thrones is just a TV show, right?”

Loki feigned a gasp of horror. “How blasphemous!”

To put it simply, there was never a dull moment with his thousand-something-year-old lover whose personality was so fluid and mercurial there was no telling which temperament Stephen was going to get until he got it.

Hippocrates himself would have found himself in a flummox if he should attempt to categorise Loki, who was as sanguine as he was choleric, as melancholic as he was phlegmatic.

Stephen Strange no longer feared to admit that he loved Loki any which way.

Granted, the first place of interest Stephen had taken Loki to had of course been the Everest, simply for the fact that it held a special place in his heart.

Stephen only realised how naïve he had been, both in his attempt to impress and in the assumption that Loki had not been to any of these wondrous places before, when Loki only looked down the line of his nose in indifference as he peered from the majestic summit of the Everest at the Lhotse Couloir in the distant with the glassiest eyes Stephen had seen since they met.

“Take me home, Stephen.”

“You don’t like it here?” Stephen had asked, his heart sinking faster than the glaciers they had seen melting off the Greenland ice sheet just a few days before. Loki had been more excited then, even after Stephen had reluctantly but adamantly stopped him from restoring the glacier to its former state.

_“We should not interfere so much with the fate of the world.” _

_“**Your **world,” Loki affirmed, slightly puzzled._

_“Yes.” Stephen’s eyes had darkened with grief. _

_“What a shame,” Loki murmured. The Casket of Ancient Winters hummed disapprovingly deep within his core at having been promised, and then denied a release from its secure yet no less constricting place of respite, all in the span of a human breath. _

_“It is.” _

Eager to leave the devastating sight behind, Stephen had taken them home then to a post-traveling cuddle beside a roaring fire with mugs of hot cocoa and plates of chocolate bourbon.

But as cold as Greenland was, The Everest was five times colder. Stephen’s fiery magic and Loki’s Jotunn physiology were the only thing keeping them from freezing to death.

“Everest isn’t even the tallest mountain on Earth, did you know?”

“It isn’t?” At Loki’s distracted shake of his head, Stephen pressed, preparing to challenge his alien lover’s knowledge of Midgardian geography. “Then what is?”

“Ka Mauna a Wākea,” Loki answered simply. “Or in today’s language, Mauna Kea.”

“That dormant volcano island in Hawaii?” Stephen said doubtfully.

“Yeah. It is 5000 metres taller than your precious Everest, if one should measure from its base in the Pacific Ocean to its highest peak.” Some of the light was beginning to return to Loki’s eyes, but Stephen had a suspicion it had nothing to do with the rising sun.

“Region of the Gods they called it. Poli‘ahu, the deity of snow, gave it its name ‘White Mountain’. That’s where He lives after all.” Loki’s barely-there smile grew wistful. “That’s what it means, Mauna Kea.”

“Huh. Quite modest compared to this, surely.” Stephen had taken care to portal them in onto an elevation on the Tibetan side, where it was less crowded despite the better view one would expect to get of the sunrise.

Loki abruptly turned his face away and surprised the hell out of Stephen by suddenly throwing himself into Stephen’s floundering, unexpecting arms.

“Loki, what’s wrong?”

“Take me home,” Loki pleaded again.

The tears glistening in Loki’s eyes had been just as alarming, if not more, than the fine tremor Stephen could feel coursing through Loki’s body as he held him tight and teleported them back to the safety and warmth of the Sanctum in noisy New York City.

Ever since Everest, Stephen made a promise to himself to always ask Loki where he wanted to go.

“Court me,” Loki murmured, the silken sheets clinging to his long, lean torso and legs, which he proceeded to wrap around the back of Stephen's waist with a gentle buck of his hips.

“What?” Stephen’s forehead wrinkled, uncomprehending. The heat stirring in his loin was very distracting.

“Court me as you would…a woman.” Loki’s gaze dropped to the Stephen’s inviting lips. “Take me on a date.”

“A date.” Stephen blinked a few times to make sure he had heard him right.

Loki suddenly looked very unsure of himself. “Is that too…modest for you?”

Stephen bit the inside of his lower lip uncertainly. “Won’t it be for you?”

Loki’s eyes softened.

“Oh, Strange.” He gave in to temptation and lifted his head off the pillow to kiss Stephen softly on the lips. “Don’t you know? Your modest is my fantastic.”

A crashing realisation hit Stephen like a brick; that he had done it yet again, had committed the blundering mistake of one so foolish in love – romantic overkill of the grandest scale.

Stephen sighed and pressed their foreheads together. “You really have seen everything there is to see, haven’t you?”

“Not everything,” Loki said placatingly. “For instance, I haven’t seen the inside of a bagel shop.”

“You haven’t?”

“Not this century, at least.” Loki shrugged. “I first came across it in Krakow sometime back in your 17th century."

Loki stretched out languidly, his black hair splayed across the white pillow in beautiful disarray. "They used to give it out as a gift to women in childbirth.”

“Really?” Stephen raised his eyebrows.

Loki nodded. “It had something to do with the round shape of the beigel, it was supposed to bring good luck to labouring women or something.”

“Huh.” Stephen searched Loki’s face for an answer to a suspicion he had long had. “Were you…gifted one?”

Loki gave him a calculating look. For a split-second, he looked on the verge of divulging a long-kept secret, but the sudden rumbling of his stomach interrupted him, shattering the moment.

“Oops.” Loki had the decency to blush. “All this talk of bagels, huh.”

Stephen laughed, albeit uneasily. Once shattered, he knew how difficult it would be to piece the moment back together. But he supposed it would have to wait. They had a full day ahead of them and Stephen needed to refresh his memory on the things couples were expected to do on a date.

He gave Loki one final peck on the tip of his nose. “Come. Get dressed.”

“Where are we going?”

Ten minutes later, they reached the front of the line at Stephen’s favourite bagel deli.

“What can I get you?”

“The Brekky Bagel and a Flat White for me, please.” Stephen’s eyes skimmed the menu board. “What do you want, Loki?”

Loki’s linguist mind ignored the pictures and read the description below each bagel instead. His eyes lit up when they reached the very last one. “I’ll have The Elvis.”

“You sure?” Stephen and the deli guy asked at the same time.

“Yes,” Loki said firmly. “The one with bacon, peanut butter, banana and cream cheese.”

“What?” Seeing the amused smile on Stephen’s face, Loki felt the need to defend his choice. “It’s breakfast. Can’t go wrong with peanut butter. Or banana, for that matter.”

“Whatever you want, Loki,” Stephen said indulgingly. “It’s your day.”

“Damn right it is.” And Loki kissed him right then and there in middle of a crowded café, and Stephen would have disappeared, had it not been for the bagels they were still waiting on.

“Loki…”

Loki pouted. “What? Haven’t you New Yorkers seen it all?”

“Oh, we have.” The girl in the purple lipstick standing in line behind them quipped, but the starstruck glaze in her eyes seemed to say otherwise. “Just. Wow.”

When they finally got their order, Loki somehow found (magicked) them a table (or miraculously made the previous occupants disappear - either way, Stephen decided that ignorance was bliss)

“How is it?”

“It’s…alright.”

“You hate it, don’t you.”

“No, no. It’s fine.” Loki took another bite that barely made a dent in the bagel. As was everything in New York, it was oversized.

“You don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it – ” Stephen made to rise, “I’ll get you another one.”

“No, Stephen!” And Stephen felt himself pulled by a pair of invisible hands and found himself sitting back down in his chair, rattling it violently.

“Loki…”

“I like it, truly.” Loki leaned in to give him an Elvis-flavoured kiss to apologise for his roughhousing. “It’s the first bagel you’ve ever bought for me on our first ever normal Midgardian date.”

“You don’t seem to be enjoying it,” Stephen said critically. He licked his lips and tasted peanut butter. It was not half-bad. “Wanna swap?”

Loki made a face at the sight of the runny yolk running down the side of Stephen’s half-eaten bagel like an abscess. “No, thank you.”

Loki took his bagel apart and scrutinised the content. He finally found the offending ingredient, the thing that did not sit quite right with his palate – “Here.”

Stephen opened his own bagel just in time to catch the flying pieces of bacon.

“Loki, how many times do I have to tell you not to play with your food?” he groused.

Loki’s fiddling fingers stopped in the midst of rearranging the banana slices so they would sit more evenly on the lake of peanut butter and cream cheese. When he looked up, his eyes were sombre. “You sound like my Mother.”

_Shit_.

Stephen had learnt by now never to let the awkward silences fester, lest the air around them stagnate and pollute the rest of the day.

“To be fair, my Mum used to say the same thing to me all the time.” Stephen offered an apologetic smile.

The glaze left Loki's eyes. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft. “You must have been such a good son to her.”

“Why do you say that?”

Loki shrugged. “You have the most impeccable table manners I have ever seen. You must have made your mother proud.”

“Just as you must have made yours.”

Loki averted his gaze. “I’m…not too sure about that,” he said lightly. “I kind of do what I want. Always have.”

“I can tell,” Stephen murmured.

“Don’t mock me, Stephen,” Loki said, suddenly sounding very tired despite it only being barely eight thirty in the morning.

“I’m not.” Stephen reached across the table for Loki’s wrist. “And I can _tell_, you know.”

“Tell what?” Loki asked, becoming more frustrated by the second.

“That she’s proud of you.”

Loki’s nose flared. “You don’t know that,” he hissed and tried to pull his hand away.

But this time, Stephen’s magic held him down. “I _do_.”

“I can tell from the way Thor looks at you and talks about you.” Stephen’s thumb slid up and down the bony peak of Loki’s middle knuckle.

“I can tell from the way you protect and care for your magic like the sacred, precious thing that it is…” Stephen’s voice trailed. “It was a gift…wasn’t it?”

Loki nodded slowly. He could not speak.

“And I know…that you feel her around you sometimes.”

“You do?”

Stephen nodded. “Because I feel her too.”

“You _do?_”

Stephen smiled kindly. “One hell of a guardian angel you’ve got there watching over your shoulder.”

_“Two_ angels now,” Loki corrected, extricating his hand from Stephen’s grasp, only to reach out to cup Stephen’s cheek.

Stephen could not help himself any longer. Leaning across the table, he seized the back of Loki’s head and kissed him fully and deeply.

“Stephen – ” Loki gasped in between hungry kisses, “People are watching.”

“We’re New Yorkers, remember?” Stephen reminded him. “We’ve seen it all.”

“Oh yes we have,” the girl quipped again from the next table, sounding pretty breathless herself. “Oh _wow_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Three if you count Thor. ❤️)
> 
> Sorry for the wait. It's not writer's block I promise you. I wish I could write every day, I go into withdrawal when I stop writing for too long which sounds ridiculous but it's true. Hope you enjoy. XOXO - L.


	13. Sharing is Caring

19\. Sharing is Caring.

“Is there something you wish you had learnt when you were young?” Stephen was secretly delighted with his growing competence in deciphering the meaning behind Loki’s icy glares, and he corrected himself gladly. “Younger?”

Loki gave a nod of approval. Or it could be one of affirmation to Stephen’s line of enquiry.

“Well, what is it? Tell me.”

“No.”

“Come on, tell me.”

“It’s humiliating.”

“Loki…”

Loki took a deep breath, appearing to gather his resolve. “Do you remember the time…when we went to Braavos?”

Stephen frowned. Then his eyes lit up in amusement. “You mean Šibenik.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes.”

Stephen pursed his lips. Croatia had never actually crossed his mind as a country worth visiting, until Loki. To be more specific, until the Game of Thrones.

“And we saw that pianist awaken the ancient pagan gods with his music?”

Stephen stared at his lover and wondered, not for the first time, what kind of world Loki was living in in his head. “He was making a music video.”

“So?”

“The pagan gods were _actors_, Loki.”

“They had a true likeness to them. Crnobog especially,” Loki said stubbornly.

“The Slavic God of Chaos. I wonder why,” Stephen muttered. “So that’s what you wanted to do? Awaken your old friends for a reunion?”

“Are you _mad?”_ Loki asked incredulously. "As much as I love the idea of a catastrophic reunion, it would almost certainly bring the end of the world with it."

Stephen laughed.

“Thor would lose his head. He and Perun couldn’t stand the sight of each other, what with each claiming to be the God of Thunder. And Bad Weather.”

Stephen laughed harder.

"Of Natural Disasters too.” Loki too was beginning to smile. “Thor’s never been very good at sharing.”

But his smile wavered, and the ever-perceptive Stephen caught its faltering. “Well, what is it then?”

Loki found himself at a loss for words.

Stephen’s eyes narrowed as he searched Loki’s face where the answer could be staring him in the eye, for all he knew. “Not the piano?”

Loki’s eyes darted here and there, looking everywhere but at him.

“You…want to learn music?” Stephen asked, more gently this time.

Loki only shrugged. “What is another want but a curse upon my insatiable soul.”

Stephen walked over slowly to where Loki was sitting cross-legged on the daybed next to the bay windows. He sat down next to his fidgety lover, and let their knees touch.

“You didn’t have music back in Asgard?” And here he thought a royal prince would have been taught everything, from sword-fighting to pheasant-hunting to waltz-dancing.

“A son of Odin and the brother of Thor, learning music?” Loki sneered. “A Prince of Asgard, playing music and singing songs alongside the minstrels and the bards?”

“It’s a good thing we’re not on Asgard anymore, then,” Stephen quipped without thinking.

Loki stiffened. “We shall speak no more of this, Strange.”

Stephen inhaled deeply. “I’m sorry, Loki. I did not mean it like that.”

Loki only looked at him, brows drawn tight across his sharp, pinched face.

“I just – I wanted you to see that you’re free now. Free to do whatever you want.” Stephen thumbed light circles into the depression in the centre of Loki’s palm. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

It isn’t?” Loki asked dryly.

Stephen shook his head. “Back in medical school, I had ex-architects, engineers, accountants in my class, already in their forties and fifties but still trying their luck at becoming a doctor. Maybe they had too much money or maybe it was their childhood dream…but the point is –”

Stephen gave Loki’s cold fingers a light squeeze. “It is never too late to learn anything, Loki. Certainly not when you have the life expectancy of a sea sponge. You have all the time in the world."

“I suppose,” Loki said glumly.

“If you’re really serious about this…”

“It is just wishful thinking, Stephen. Do think nothing of it.”

Stephen ignored Loki’s attempt to sweep the issue under the carpet. “Do you want me to find a…teacher for you?”

“That’s sweet of you, Stephen, but…I’d rather you didn't.” Loki abruptly rose to his feet and walked across the room. “I’m quite notorious in this part of town, in case you didn’t know.” 

Stephen never liked seeing hesitation in Loki, be it in his countenance, his gait, least of all, his eyes. Loki had always been self-assured, assertive, bordering on over-confident most of the time. To hear it in his voice, the doubt, that infuriating tone of self-pity…it hurt Stephen on an almost physical level.

Stephen rose to join his brooding boyfriend, for he knew physical proximity was the one thing that might help pull Loki out of his pity party.

“Notoriously good-looking and exceptionally clever?” Stephen pointedly looked at the canvas painting hanging on the wall above Loki’s head with a critical eye. “You’re like a sponge, you pick up anything in a matter of days, if not hours.”

“Again with that, Strange? Sounds like you have a pretty special and intimate relationship with this…sponge creature.” In a display of defeat, Loki wrapped his arms around the back of Stephen’s neck, who in turn placed his hands on Loki’s hips.

“I’m flattered, truly.” Loki planted a soft kiss on Stephen’s lips. “But painting by numbers is hardly a learned skill, Strange.”

“Out of all the Goyas you could have reproduced, you had to choose this one.” Stephen let his distaste show in his tone of voice. Loki was much too proud of his work and his ‘refined’ eye for the arts to feel a smidgen of offense; no amount of reverse psychology was going to make Loki take it down. “What’s this one called, _The Witchy Brew_? The works we saw back in Madrid were more colourful.”

“His earlier portraits, yes.” Loki turned his head to look behind. “Did you know he was deaf by the end of his life? Driven to the edge of madness by illness, his works grew darker and darker. His Black Paintings were my favourite.”

“Why do all these artists’ life stories sound the same?” Stephen pondered aloud. “Van Gogh, Munch, Gauguin…”

“Their genius was probably too much for their human mind to bear.”

“What genius? It’s just a picture of two old men eating soup,” Stephen muttered under his breath.

Knowing Loki, he would set the whole place on fire at hearing something much less blasphemous.

“Couldn’t you have drawn something…brighter?”

“What, like _The Drowning Dog?”_ Loki asked acidly. “You said it was the saddest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.”

Stephen ignored Loki’s scathing but ultimately painless taunting. After all, what did he know about fine art, other than the fact that it made Loki happy and occupied, judging by the hours Loki had spent museum-hopping in New York alone? “I was thinking Monet.”

“You would have me paint landscapes and flowers?” Casting him a withering look, Loki released his hold around Stephen’s neck as he swivelled to marvel at the painting, but he allowed Stephen’s arms to remain wrapped around him. “When I can draw _this?”_

Stephen’s resigned sigh bristled the baby hairs along Loki’s hairline. “You and your skeletons.”

“It is morbid. So what.” Loki's shrug may be nonchalant but his eyes were shining. “It’s _alive.”_

“It is?” Stephen asked and hoped he did not sound too uncultured and low-born but his interest was greatly piqued now - “Like, in the magical sense?”

“No, silly!” Loki laughed, much more loudly than he normally would. “What a book takes a hundred thousand words to tell you, a picture does it in a second.”

“Do you see the figure on the right?” Loki tipped his chin forward, and Stephen caught a whiff of his own shampoo as Loki’s hair brushed against his face.

“Hard not to,” Stephen mumbled into the back of Loki’s head.

“He is but a skull yet he clamours for more soup. It is never going to nourish him in any way for he is already dead. And yet he wants more.”

Stephen opened his eyes he did not realise he had closed but the darkness remained, and something told him the inky blackness of Loki’s hair was not to blame. At least, not entirely. “The human greed knows no bounds.”

“I speak for myself and I am no human,” Loki said flatly. “Who do you think is on the left, if not you?”

A stunned hush fell over the private alcove of Stephen’s study. The room suddenly grew cold. Very cold.

“I am begging for scraps from _you_. And from everyone else in the universe.”

After a long stretch of tense silence,

“I think you’ve got us mixed up, Loki,” Stephen said quietly. “There is only one bowl of soup.”

Loki stilled. “And?”

“You know I would always share with you. What I have, and what I don’t.”

Loki stared at the macabre painting before him. For some bizarre reason, a peculiar wetness was filling his eyes and an invisible clamp girding his chest with alarming tightness.

He turned around very, very slowly to face his lover.

This time Loki prised Stephen’s hands off his waist only to hold them palm-down against his heart, and the tightness receded like magic.

He gasped suddenly, inhaling breath after tight breath hungrily, but still the void in his chest screamed for more -

“Loki, what’s wrong?” Stephen could feel the thundering of Loki’s heart rattling his ribcage and alarm bells began to sound in his head. “Are you alright?”

After a few, soul-crushing minutes, Loki could finally find it in himself to speak.

“Why do you put up with me, Strange?” Loki managed, his sobs soft and far-between, but they were thunder to Stephen’s ears. “I am _broken.”_

Stephen pulled him into a tight embrace. “Oh, Loki…”

“I cannot stop wanting more.”

“I will give you more.”

“You can’t,” Loki whispered, in shame, in guilt. In _defeat_. “You won’t.”

“I can try,” Stephen said fiercely. “You know it deep down, that what I am saying is the truth.”

Stephen’s list of promises to Loki had to be an arm span long by now. “What I can give you, I _will.”_

For what was one more promise, if it was true?

What was one more vow, if it could melt tension away from this slender frame that fit so perfectly in his arms?

“You are not broken. You are not this – ” Stephen wracked his brain for the right word. He did not find it. “This _thing_ that needs to be fixed.”

Loki remained rigid.

“You are _whole_.” Stephen kissed their foreheads together, his warm against Loki’s. “You are my missing piece, Loki.”

Loki stared at him, unblinking. This up close, Stephen could see the flecks of gold speckled across his green irises.

“I think we need to lie down,” Loki murmured. His head was swimming.

“I think we do,” Stephen agreed.

Stephen teleported them to the bedroom they shared up in the attic. They laid each other down on the bed and listened to each other breathe for what felt like hours.

Loki’s head was a familiar weight in the crook of his arm, as was Stephen’s leg in the crook of Loki’s knee.

“Just out of curiosity, who would you have teach me?” came Loki’s quiet voice after an eternity.

“Hmm?” Stephen opened eyes he did not realise he had once again closed. “What, painting? I haven’t the faintest idea.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “The piano.”

“I have a lawyer friend in Hell’s Kitchen who can probably teach you.” Stephen’s fingers threaded through the fine strands of hair on the back of Loki’s head. “Name’s Murdock.”

“What, an actual person?” Loki looked instantly uneasy. “Don’t you humans have a whatsit, a program, an – an app that can teach me how to play?”

Stephen chuckled but his chortle at Loki's millennial naiveté was short-lived and tinged with sympathy and a lot of sadness. “You don’t have to worry about protecting your identity, Loki. Matt’s blind.”

“Oh.”

As much as he would have liked pressing his human lover for more information, Loki had not meant to make Stephen sad.

“What about you?” he asked, almost desperately.

“What about me?” Stephen asked, stifling a yawn.

“There must be something you must have wanted to do but never had the opportunity to?”

Stephen was quiet for a while. “I have always wanted to learn horseback riding.”

Loki jolted up on the bed with lightning speed. “I’ll teach you.”

“That’s sweet of you, Loki, but I don’t see how you can.” Stephen suppressed his whine at the sudden disappearance of the comforting weight in his arm, in its place now a numbing paralysis that made his hand shake even more. “My tremor, remember?”

That only made Loki more adamant and fired-up. “Nothing my magic can’t fix temporarily.”

“A temporary fix isn’t a fix at all, Loki. Trust me, I’m a surgeon. Was.” He clawed the air and made a grab for Loki. “Come lie back down – ”

“No.” Loki was ice and steel. “I will have you riding with me if it’s the last thing I do.”

Stephen stared at the stubborn set of Loki’s lips. “How?”

“Watch me.” Loki gave a determined nod. “Asgard’s stables. First thing tomorrow morning.”

“Loki…”

“One of the best Masters of the Horse we ever had on Old Asgard was an amputee, Strange,” Loki growled. “I can do this. You can do this.”

Stephen’s eyes glazed over. “I can do this.”

“Damn right you can, Doctor. And you will.”

Before he knew it, Loki had swooped down and was kissing him deep and hard. “It’s my bowl, and I am sharing it with _you.”_

As the gentle sun shone through the skylight, the silhouette of the Eye shrouded Loki’s face, but never had Stephen seen it so bright, so earnest –

“Alright, Loki.” And not for the first time, Stephen wondered if the shadow was not meant for him, if he was not the one basking in the shy brilliance of Loki’s radiance.

The perfume of Loki's hair brought him around, and Stephen decided he did not care one whit, save for this heaven-sent creature in his arms.

A bowl of soup, for a bottle of sweet shampoo.

A childhood dream...for that one missing piece.

A fair trade, if Stephen had ever seen one. "You complete me, Loki."

"Silly Stephen." The salt of Loki's tears seeped into Stephen's mouth, and he had never tasted, nor heard, anything quite so sweet. "You complete _me."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Paintings mentioned (Two Old Ones Eating Soup or The Witchy Brew, The Drowning Dog) are actual masterpieces by Francisco de Goya, a Spanish romantic painter in the late 18th - early 19th century. 
> 
> 2\. Matt Murdock aka Daredevil (The Defenders), is played by the talented Charlie Cox. 
> 
> 3\. The pianist mentioned is Maksim Mrvica. He filmed his music video 'Game of Thrones' in his hometown Sibenik, one of the film locations for GoT. (I have this headcanon that S&L went on a round-the-world GoT Tour.) At the end of the video, he awakens the five ancient Slavic gods Svarog, Vesna, Crnobog, Morana and Radogost, with his beautiful music I presume.
> 
> Thanks for reading. :)


	14. Savoir Aimer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Knowing how to love, is knowing how to heal.

  1. Savoir Aimer

The pain hit Loki with the might of Thor’s hammer, swift and brutal. Loki barely had the time to stifle the scream before the invisible knives plunged once more in his chest, sending him tumbling off the side of the bed and driving him to his knees.

The battle earlier during the day had been one of the more difficult ones to win. Dr Victor von Doom’s latest invention, a more-than-passable magic dampener had rendered his powers more or less impotent, and he had had to resort to physical combat to defeat von Doom’s legion of Doombots.

Without his magic and the protection of his seidr-fortified armour, Loki had taken quite a number of hits – nothing that would have taken him down or injured him permanently, but he was feeling the aftereffects all the same.

It was astounding just how much pain the adrenaline storm in the heat of battle could camouflage. Stephen had done his best to protect them both, at the expense of his fast-dwindling energy.

At least the Sorcerer Supreme’s magic had been unaffected by von Doom’s abominable contraption, even managed to destroy it at the last minute before it could drain Loki down to a husk.

And now Loki found himself doubled over in agony, and as he buried his face in Stephen’s armchair, silently screaming expletive after expletive, he hoped that neither his chaotic seidr nor his flailing limbs would wake his lover up from much-needed rest.

He hoped wrong.

“Loki?” A pair of hands grabbed his shoulders from behind. “Loki, what’s the matter?”

Loki groaned aloud, in pain and utter frustration alike. He had hoped to ride this one out on his own, sparing himself the humiliation and the inevitable compulsion to explain. Stephen had a way of making him talk, and that was when Loki was _coherent_.

“Hurts,” Loki gasped, his eyes watering. And before Stephen could ask where, “_Chest_.”

Yeah, so much for suffering in silence.

“Let me see,” Stephen said tersely, trying to get Loki to uncurl as gently as was practically possible.

“Did we miss something?” There was no mistaking the rising panic in Stephen’s voice; there was no doubt the doctor in him was going through his mental checklist of life-threatening injuries they might have overlooked; Loki could hear him ticking it off one by one. “Any difficulty breathing? Did you bring up any blood? You having palpitations?”

Loki nodded to the first one, shook his head at all the others.

“Come on, sit up. Lean against me,” Stephen urged.

“No,” Loki wheezed. “This shall pass. It always does.”

“Right. When you’re cold and blue, you mean.”

Loki had to laugh, “_Exactly_.”

“Enough fucking around, Loki,” Stephen growled. “Let me see.”

Stephen grappled at Loki’s torso and pushed his sweat-drenched tunic out of the way.

The scar where Algrim had run his sword through burnt a pulsating, angry red.

“How?” Stephen breathed.

Loki fought to pace his breathing as the wound throbbed and throbbed in time with the beating of his heart; the faster he breathed, the more his heart raced, and the worse it hurt.

“This – you told me it was an old wound,” Stephen said accusingly.

“It is,” Loki mumbled.

“This is very poorly-healed.”

“It will never heal. The poison, it stays.” Loki tilted sideways and leaned his head against the bed as he curled tighter around the pain. “My magic’s been keeping it suppressed.”

Stephen traced his fingers lightly against the wound edges. Exquisitely tender and warm to the touch, the fluctuance he was feeling underneath his touch was unmistakable.

How? How could he have spent all this time with Loki and not noticed that all the while Loki had been hiding a festering, purulent abscess right under his breastbone?

Stephen summoned his healing energy from deep within his core –

“Leave it.”

Not allowed entry, the magic stirred aimlessly at the tips of his fingers.

“Why won’t you let me heal it?” Stephen asked quietly.

“I wouldn’t worry overmuch about it, Stephen. The pain is…seasonal.”

Stephen stared at Loki in disbelief. “I beg your pardon?”

“It is the one thing my Mother and I have in common.” Loki grasped Stephen’s wrist gently and pulled it toward the floor between them. “Or had. She died from it. I didn’t.”

Stephen had heard the story before, of how Loki still blamed himself for his Mother’s death. Thor told it quite differently; the Queen of Asgard had died with honour, protecting Jane Foster, her firstborn’s mortal lover.

Anger stirred slow and simmering in the pit of Stephen’s gut. “Is this your way of punishing yourself?”

Loki blinked owlishly, his eyes dull against the pallor of his face and the moonlight. “It is my way of remembering her.”

“I don’t see how you going through excruciating pain is a token of remembrance she would appreciate very much,” Stephen said sharply.

“Doesn’t matter either way, does it,” Loki said flatly. “She’s gone.”

A tear made its way slowly down his temple and disappeared into Stephen’s bedding. “She’s in Valhalla.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“Only at the prospect of never seeing her again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“It is incontestable.”

“Bullshit.”

“As much as I love fighting with you, my darling, can we do it later when I can actually breathe in between arguments?”

“Tell me what will help,” Stephen demanded softly.

“Give it a rest, Stephen,” Loki said tiredly.

“Tell me,” Stephen gritted his teeth, “Or I will strap you to a table and debride the hell out of that wound, magic or no magic. Your choice.”

Loki looked at Stephen’s hands. In his anger, the tremor had become coarse, even at rest. Stephen saw, and indignantly kept his hands in plain sight.

“Time,” Loki relented. “And…sleep, I think. If I can manage it.”

He sighed heavily. “Her face becomes a blur the closer the world comes to waking, and with it dulls the pain.”

“Come.” Stephen rose to one knee. “Let’s get you off the floor and back in bed.”

Loki reluctantly clung to the back of Stephen’s shoulders, bracing himself against the fresh onslaught of pain as Stephen hoisted him up carefully.

He only resumed breathing when stars appeared in front of his eyes, blinding white against the balmy darkness of the night.

“What’s that?” Loki asked through bleary eyes.

“It’s a medicinal salve for chest congestion.” At the dubious look on Loki’s face, Stephen deadpanned, “It’s homemade.”

“Oh I don’t doubt it.” Loki sniffed. “I can tell from the smell.”

“Twenty drops of eucalyptus, five drops each of peppermint, lavender and melaleuca, swimming in a sea of beeswax and jojoba.” Using the tips of his index and middle fingers, Stephen began to carefully apply the salve to the clear skin margin immediately around the wound. “Which I’m sure you’ve already discerned by now with that super-nose of yours.”

“How extraordinary,” Loki murmured.

“What?” Stephen’s husky voice wafted through the essential oil-laden ambience of the room.

“It’s just how my Mother used to make it.” Loki inhaled deeply, taking in the painfully familiar yet overwhelmingly soothing scent. “Are you even real?”

A soft, tinkling laughter cut through the hum of the air humidifier Stephen had just turned on. A gentle kiss found its way in the dark to land on Loki’s slightly parted lips.

“Does that feel real to you?”

Loki drowsed. “Uh-uh.”

After a few minutes of comfortable silence,

“I’m sorry, Stephen.”

Stephen continued to rub Loki’s chest without saying a word. He knew Loki did not mean it.

“It was never my intention to hide this from you.”

Stephen willingly believed the lie out of relief, since the pain seemed to be receding and Loki was breathing easier now.

Just when Stephen thought he had successfully suppressed the impulse to holler his head off at Loki for his sheer stupidity, Stephen surprised himself by opening his mouth to speak, the words flowing out of him like water.

“For years after my sister’s death, I would wake up every so often choking and gasping. At first I thought I was having panic attacks or PTSD or something. Self-treated, because I thought I knew how.” Stephen inhaled deeply. “But the dreams never stopped.”

He gathered enough courage to meet Loki’s mildly horrified gaze,

“I didn’t want them to,” Stephen confessed.

“I became a doctor to escape the guilt, but with every patient I lost, the guilt grew.” A shrug, careless and nonchalant to the uneducated eye. “So did my ego. Threw myself into work, alienated everyone I loved and everyone who loved me – ”

Stephen’s eyes stung but they remained dry. “Took me decades to come to terms with her death.”

He slipped a hand underneath Loki’s back to rub some of the salve in between Loki’s shoulder blades. “Then one day…the dreams stopped.”

“What happened?”

“I met the Ancient One.” Stephen thumbed some oil into the dimples at Loki’s temples. “I met _you_.”

Loki gawked, for it was simply bizarre what Stephen was alleging, “What did I do?”

“You helped me sleep better.”

“Glad I could help.” Loki gave a slow, sickly grin. He reached up to grasp the oil-slickened fingers still resting on his aching chest.

“Loki…”

“Shhh.” With a sigh, he brought the fingers to his lips and kissed their tips tenderly. “Maybe someday.”

“When?” Stephen pleaded achingly, not near ready to give up –

“Someday, Stephen.” _I will let you help me._

And Loki slipped into a restless slumber…Odin once said he was to never see her again, but like father like son, Odin may just turn out to be the biggest liar of all for there she was, waiting for him.

Mother, he smiled.

_I will let you help me, Stephen. But not today._

Frigga smiled back at him, radiant and beautiful as he had always remembered.

_Not today._


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It begins with a fall, and thus, it must end with a fall.

_Thunder and lightning batter the rocks._

_The winds howl, and great storms break on the forest, scatter the herds like rain._

_Fire leaps from dark to dark, fear and anger leap to meet it_

_We will not go down. We will not be beaten down like grain._

Riverdance: Thunderstorm, 1996

“You’re quiet.”

“I just did not expect you to bring me here.”

“You were in the mood for oysters. Google says Galway is one of the best places to have them.”

Loki could not argue with what was undoubtedly the gospel truth. “That is true.”

“And I’ve always wanted to see the Cliffs of Moher for myself.”

Loki’s face scrunched into a comical yet endearing ‘Yeah, right’ expression. “You can go anywhere. Anytime. Any_when_.” 

The views from where they were strolling along the beaten paths were incredible – the cliffs stretched two miles off the coast overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, and where the waves hit the rocks some few-hundred feet below, the seawater rose several storeys high.

How amazing it was, what the power of nature could do to loosen one’s tongue.

“True, but this is the first time I’m doing it with someone special.”

“Stop.” A strong gust of wind nearly carried Loki’s voice, sweeping his long locks free off his shoulders. “You’re making me blush.”

“Which I wouldn’t exactly say no to.” Stephen gave him a sharp side-glance. “You’re not cold, are you? Here, you can have The Cloak – ”

“No, Stephen, I’m fine.”

Stephen tried again. “You look kinda grey. You sure you’re okay? Did you have a bad oyster?”

“I’m fine, Stephen,” Loki said imploringly. “Let’s just…enjoy the walk, alright?”

“No. Something’s definitely wrong.” As if the wild, rugged Irish landscape was not spectacular enough, grey clouds began to gather over their heads.

Either Stephen had just jinxed their short, impromptu trip to the Old Country, or Loki could somehow control the weather, just like his brother.

Loki’s face, ashen seconds ago, was now as dark as the rain clouds rolling in over the quaint town of Doolin.

“Seriously, if you’re not comfortable here, let’s just go back.”

“For the last time, Stephen, I’m _fine_,” Loki growled under his breath, but despite his biting words, his stride was slowly but surely coming to a stop.

“Every time I come to a place like this, the stories just…” His voice trailed off to a haunted thrill that the howling wind thankfully drowned, for Loki would hate for Stephen to fuss over him for no reason.

Stephen halted in his steps the second time. “This isn’t another Everest for you, is it?”

The knee-high grass battered their legs in the gale but Loki paid it no heed. “No. Close, though.”

“Loki…”

Loki should have known. He sighed and stopped a few feet away.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you.”

Stephen stood his ground. Unlike the Everest, Loki did not immediately demand their return, which would mean either Loki wanted to be here…

Or he could not leave.

“Do you see that rock formation over there?” Loki pointed. “Hag’s Head the locals call it.”

“I think I can see why,” Stephen said slowly.

From where they were standing, the jutting rock structure resembled a woman’s head looking out to sea. “Nice to know not all places of legend are named after beautiful maidens and star-crossed lovers.”

“The Gaels were not a romantic bunch of people, no,” Loki admitted. “The Old Man of Storr on Skye…”

“And that mountain you made me climb on Argyll and Bute?”

“Yeah.” Loki smiled a tight, nostalgic smile. “The Bastard.”

“So…” Stephen carefully walked toward where Loki was standing. “What’s the story?”

“Are you familiar with the legend of Cúchulainn, Stephen?”

“Of course. He is the son of the Celtic God Lugh, said to be one of the greatest Irish mythological heroes immortalised in the stories of the Ulster Cycle.”

“There once was a woman…Mal was her name. She was not considered attractive by conventional standards. Old Hag, they used to call her.”

“She fell in love with the mighty Cúchulainn and pursued him all over Ireland with the hope that one day Cúchulainn would return her love,” Loki whispered. “Which was impossible for she was only in love with an illusion.” 

“She cornered him here, in County Clare – ” Before Stephen could stop him, Loki jumped onto a rock very close to the precipice, and onto another, this time closer to the open sea than the one before. “Cúchulainn hopped across these very sea stacks along the Cliffs of Moher to escape her…”

“But Mal, my poor, dear Mal…” Loki sighed, eyes empty and not even looking where he was jumping, hopped onto another dangerously slippery rock. “Lost her footing and fell to her death, right…”

Loki’s boots came to a stop right on the edge of the cliff. “Here.”

Stephen’s heart stopped.

“Ever heard the sound of a human skull cracking against the rocks, Doctor?” Loki asked softly. “You don’t ever forget it. It is one of the most difficult things on Earth to unhear.”

Stephen felt a sick churning in the pit of his stomach. “What are you talking about?”

“A place of beauty,” Loki whispered. “And all I see is red.”

The sound of thunder heralded the coming of rain; Loki lifted his face and the first few drops landed on his cheeks. They glistened like silver as they ran down the sides of Loki’s face.

“Ah. A thunderstorm. How appropriate,” Loki let out an exalted sigh. “The perfect weather for a bit of old school Irish step dancing.”

“Loki, step back from the ledge,” Stephen said very, very quietly. “This is hardly the place to be showcasing one of your hidden talents, as sexy as it may be.”

But Loki was not listening. “Ever heard of Riverdance, Doctor? There’s this number I learnt by heart, it goes like this – ”

_“Tall and straight, my mother taught me_.” Loki’s steel-toe boots rapped out the first cadences in sharp bursts of staccato, as a razor-sharp grin cleaved his face, ghostly grey now, as grey as the clouds.

“_This is how we dance_.”

He could hear Stephen calling, could feel Stephen reaching out with his fastidious magic, trying to get Loki to come away, but Loki was lost to the music only he could hear –

_Carry on dancing_

And Loki did, tapping his feet against the rocks as the rhythm picked up pace, growing more and more demanding with each thunderous beat of the drum.

“Mal of Malbay,” he summoned, his ancient tongue calling out to another time, another reality, another point in history. “Hear me.”

Loki opened his eyes and locked his gaze onto Stephen’s terrified face one last time.

“Take me,” he whispered.

_“No!!!”_ Stephen’s panicked cry was the last thing he heard,

and Cúchulainn threw himself backward into the waiting arms of the sea.

The drumbeats slowed to a steady pulse, pounding and pounding against the unbearable pressure crushing his ears –

Falling was an art he had mastered.

_Just like a stone, _was the one numb thought that replayed in his mind as Loki clasped his hands to his chest, the freezing wind pricking his face and every inch of exposed skin like needles made of ice,

_Just like a stone._

A thin, whistling sound pierced the air.

A split second later, a heavy, tarp-like piece of fabric swaddled him like a cocoon, just as a pair of strong arms wrapped themselves around his neck in a chokehold for dear life.

Loki opened his eyes, and through the balmy haze of madness and rain, he could barely make out just inches from his face someone’s features, contorted in a furious grimace – _Stephen?_

Tears sprang to his eyes, but the searing wind took them away just as it did the howling that escaped his throat, “Stephen,_ NO!”_

Loki raised his head and through the heavy flapping of The Cloak, eyes half-blind from the wind glimpsed giant waves swallowing the rocks below like beasts arisen from the deep.

_This is it_.

As Stephen held him tighter, a beastly pain cleaved his heart in two, and Loki roared again in agony.

He had pictured them dying together many, many times before, but never had he ever imagined it would end and hurt this bad.

If the Void had been perishingly cold, this time the end was an inferno: a blistering, scorching heat that seared him from head to toe, and all Loki could think of was how blessed he was, that this time…this time he was not alone.

_Stephen_, was his last thought as they slammed into the ground.

__________________________________________

_O the summer time has come_

_And the trees are sweetly bloomin'_

_And the wild mountain thyme_

_Grows around the bloomin' heather_

_Will ye go, Lassie, go_

Wild Mountain Thyme, Irish-Scottish folk song

“Loki!”

With a gasp, Loki bucked violently, but someone or something was quick to pin his flailing limbs to the floor.

“Loki, you’re okay!” Someone shouted.

“Stephen?” Loki breathed out, not daring to believe his eyes and ears, “Is it really you?”

Stephen answered with a hard, angry kiss, and once he was done bruising Loki’s lips, with a furious “You stupid, stupid _fool_,” followed by an irate, “What were you thinking?”

“What were _you_ thinking?” Loki shot back. “You could have died!”

“Says the guy who jumped off a cliff!”

“Och, I could have turned into a seagull mid-flight –”

“A 500-foot cliff, Loki!”

“Or a freshwater salmon.”

“Of all the craziest things you’ve done, Loki – ” Stephen blinked. “Freshwater?”

“Yeah. They’re less flavoursome, less likely to get eaten.”

Stephen stared down at the one person he never thought would own his heart, but given that Stephen had just nearly given his _life_, he felt he had the right to ask.

“Why, Loki?” He pleaded. “Why do you do this to yourself?”

Loki’s hands fell away from cupping Stephen’s face and flopped soundlessly to the dusty marble floor.

“The sea turned red where she fell.” His whisper echoed off the high vaulted ceilings of the Sanctum. “All the way to the Cliffs.”

At the sight of Loki’s tight face, weathered by centuries upon centuries of painful memories, Stephen felt his own crumple in anguish.

Hiding his face in the curve of Loki’s neck, Stephen curled his fingers around Loki’s cold, cold ones.

“Punishing yourself for something that isn’t your fault isn’t atonement, Loki.” He moaned into Loki’s heaving chest, “It’s _torture_.”

_It is what I deserve._

Stephen lifted his head as though Loki had voiced his mind out loud.

“Do you honestly think you don’t deserve to live?” His eyes were red. “If so, why do you think you are not dead already?”

Loki could not speak.

“There’s so many things we haven’t done.” Stephen’s eyes stung but he held fast, for he was far from finished. “You promised to stay. Remember?”

“I can’t.” At the sight of the tears in Stephen’s eyes, Loki’s own heart twisted in his chest. “I’m not good enough.”

“Not good enough for _what?_” Stephen demanded, helpless frustration seeping through every pore of his body as he pressed down harder, as if he could force the answer out of Loki physically.

Instead of pushing Stephen off of him, or worse, teleporting the hell out of there, Loki stayed put right where he was…and none was more surprised than Stephen when Loki simply answered with a soft, apologetic kiss to his forehead. Stephen’s jaw dropped as he realised with a jolt.

“For _me?_”

The sudden dimming of Loki’s green eyes was all the answer Stephen needed.

“You stupid, stupid fool.” The more upset Stephen was, the more repetitive he became. “I _love_ you.”

“You can’t possibly, Stephen. I am a ghost.”

Stephen grabbed the side of Loki’s face roughly. “Do you feel that?” He buried Loki’s face in his chest where he knew his mortal heart beat the loudest. “Do you hear that?”

“I see you.” As the damp spot on his chest grew, Stephen kissed the top of Loki’s head fiercely. “I _feel_ you. In everything I do.”

“You have never been more alive to me, Loki.”

Loki’s thin frame began to shake.

“I am a _curse_, Stephen,” he finally choked out, “I will hurt you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Stephen whispered huskily. “Coz I made a promise too.”

Stephen thumbed the tears at the corners of Loki’s eyes before they could escape, “I will come for you, Loki. No matter what.”

Loki cracked the tiniest smile. The haze lifted and his eyes cleared.

He looked around.

“Hey.” His gaze landed on the grand staircase of Sanctum Sanctorum a few feet away. “This is where we first met.”

“So it is.” Stephen barely looked up. His portals were never wrong. “Perfect landing, huh.”

He kissed the tip of Loki’s nose. “Caught you this time, Odinson.”

“Nice catch,” Loki said lightly. His tears were drying, but the marble floor was as cold as ice beneath him. He shivered involuntarily, and Stephen saw.

“What say we get a fire going and then you and I…” Stephen undulated against him suggestively. “ – share a tub of ice cream?”

Since almost dying always called for a celebration, “Moose Tracks?”

Stephen hated peanut butter cups, but Loki loved them so, “Why not.”

And since there was nothing wrong with going all out, “And Irish whiskey?”

“Anything you want.”

Loki’s thin-lipped smile widened into a grin, but Stephen’s wavered. “Will you be alright by yourself while I nip out to the shops for a bit?”

Loki heard the undercurrent of abject concern in Stephen’s voice and he melted. “I’m _staying_, Stephen.”

“Good,” Stephen breathed out in relief and rewarded Loki with a full, satisfying kiss. “Jolly good.”

He helped Loki to his feet, and carefully looked Loki up and down for any injuries he might have missed, despite knowing he was not going to find any, for they had made it out in just the nick of time. Satisfied upon finding none, he teleported them both to the Drawing Room where it was even colder than the Atrium.

“Start the fire.” Stephen squeezed Loki’s hands. “Be back in a sec.”

Loki looked at the man who had saved his life, and decided it was time. “I love you, Stephen.”

Stephen’s face instantly lit up with a glow, which made Loki wonder if either of them had started a fire by magic without realising.

“I’ll be back,” Stephen croaked, and kissed Loki one last time, before disappearing in the blink of an eye.

Loki shook his head in amusement.

As he walked toward the marble slab mantelpiece, his dirty leathers melted away into a fresh change of casual clothes. He crouched down and stacked the Norwegian birch firewood he had painstakingly brought from Asgard (Stephen called him a privileged elitist; Loki just liked the smell) and set it alight with a simple spell.

He climbed to his feet, and as he straightened, the knot of his dressing gown fell away.

Loki was about to tie his robe around his waist again when a voice startled him from behind.

“Hmm…I’ve always liked seeing you in silk, Lo-Lo.”

Loki’s heart stuttered. His face grew hot, as hot as the fire blazing before him.

He turned around very, very slowly.

A very tall, svelte figure clad head-to-toe in gold leaned against the doorjamb. “Did you miss me?”

_“Grandmaster.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. In [The Amendment](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18310754/chapters/43342454), Cúchulainn is revealed to be one of Loki's many alter egos. In the Capsule Collection, Stephen knows of Loki's other personas (Lugh, Cúchulainn) but not in this universe. 
> 
> 2\. There WILL be a sequel.
> 
> 3\. Happy St Patrick's Day! (No wonder Loki's favourite colour is green!)
> 
> 4\. Thank you for all the kudos and the comments, readers. I cherish every single one of them. THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart.


End file.
